214 BUREAU OF AMEKICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



contracted from clji. In the cases of infinitives and participles, 

 exceptions are more numerous than with nouns. Examples of the 

 use and disuse of this g are the following: 



xd'gai the dog B 37.4 na'nAn his grandmother B 59.14 



Lua'i the canoe B 29.21 nd'hgai the play 



djd'gAn his wife B 29.30 qfadi'gai the slumber 



awu'n his mother B 7.1 d'sgai this thing B 33.28 



goda'i the box B 71.32 V gea'lgai when he came (to be) 



In the Masset dialect the g of -a^^n, the Skidegate past-inexperienced 

 temporal suffix (see § 23.2, p. 248), is dropped in most situations, but 

 retained as g after a, conformably with the above rule 



la l! isdagl'ganan they l! ^d'sgadani they landed 



always took him xed idja'ni they were ashore 

 But— 



qdL yu'An qHdju' hlagan a big V td'gani he ate 



reef stood out of the water UAn %'Llagidagan one was chief 



The final consonant of certain stems is sometimes Z, sometimes I. 

 Of these, I usually appears before a vowel, I before a consonant: 



Ia stA l! stlls they went back a'asin gut Ia qaxitgid'lasi he 

 for him ran over this way upon it 



But accent seems to have something to do with the phenomenon; 

 for, when two vowels precede this consonant and the accent falls 

 upon the second, I is commonly employed; thus — 



Gei Id'ga Ia tcH'tlaged'lgai lu when he got through breaking his 

 paddles 



I is also sometimes introduced where it has no grammatical signifi- 

 cance, and thus we find yakulsl'a in the middle instead of yakusl'a. 



n and n seem to bear much the same relation to each other as do 

 Z and I, only in this case n is plainly the original sound. Thus the 

 terminal phonetic combination -nAS often contracts to ns; for 

 example, nd'tga Tiao la'oatugwangAnAS his nephew sat around 

 WHITTLING or iid'tga liao la'oatugwangAHS. This phenomenon may 

 be due as much to rapid pronunciation as to any other cause. 



Before s the terminal n of the imperative future suffix disappears, 

 as also from gana'n like before xau, as in gana'xAn; while in gi'hgAn 

 TO HIMSELF it appears to be inserted. 



s becomes dj before most vowels; for example, tds sand, td'djai 

 THE sand; d'dji this, d'sgai this thing; hawa'n dAh x'e'nAnaudja 

 DO YOU still live? and gAm gu ^aul dA'Wa UalA'h i'nalnanus 



§5 



