444 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



in the beginning of § 10, also indicate the occurrence of certain classes 

 of ideas. The principle of classification, however, remains obscure. 

 In syntactic construction a classification of nouns according to 

 form — such as long, round, flat — is carried through in some cases, 

 and runs parallel with a differentiation of verbs of position and 

 motion for objects of different form. 



§ 13. Plurality 



The idea of plurality is not clearly developed. Reduplication of a 

 noun expresses rather the occurrence of an object here and there, or 

 of different kinds of a particular object, than plurality. It is therefore 

 rather a distributive than a true plural. It seems that this form is 

 gradually assuming a purely plural significance. In many cases in 

 which it is thus applied in my texts, the older generation criticises its 

 use as inaccurate. Only in the case of human beings is reduplication 

 applied both as a plural and a distributive. In the pronoun the idea 

 of plurality is not developed. The combination of speaker and others 

 must not be considered as a plurality ; but the two possible combina- 

 tions — of the speaker and others, including the person addressed, and 

 of the speaker and others, excluding the person addressed — are dis- 

 tinguished as two separate forms, both of which seem to be derived 

 from the form denoting the speaker (first person singular). The 

 plurality of persons addressed and of persons spoken of is indicated 

 by the addition of a suffix which probably originally meant "people." 

 This, however, is not applied unless the sense requires an emphasis of 

 the idea of plurality. It does not occur with inanimate nouns. 



In the verb, the idea of plurality is naturally closely associated 

 with that of distribution; and for this reason we find, also in Kwa- 

 kiutl, the idea of plurality fairly frequently expressed by a kind of 

 reduplication similar to that used for expressing the distributive of 

 nouns. This form is applied regularly in the Bella Bella dialect, 

 which has no means of expressing pronominal plurality. 



Related to the reduplicated nominal plural is also the reduplicated 

 verbal stem which conveys purely the idea of distribution, of an 

 action done now and then. 



§ 14. Reduplication for Expressing Unreality 



Reduplication is also used to express the diminutive of nouns, the 

 idea of a playful performance of an activity, and the endeavor to per- 

 form an action. It would seem that in all these forms we have the 



§§ 13, 14 



