riOAs] HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 889 



Examples illustrating this law are: 



m'rasis thou breakest with mouth {s-r- equals Ponca.v;?-,- ra- Win- 

 nebago WITH THE mouth) 



suru'sis thou breakest by pulling (s-r- equals Ponca sn-; ru- Win- 

 nebago BY pulling) 



haku' ruga>< I tear my own {k- one's own, followed b}- the vowel of 

 the first syllable of the verb ; ru- by pulling) 



hal-a'ras!s I break my own with mouth 

 (compare also — 



kawa'nAnga for hewe a'nAnga and he entered 



hWafafnAfiga for MfWe a'nAnga and he spoke 



§ 5. GRAMMATICAL PROCESSES 



Grammatical relations are expressed by juxtaposition, composition, 

 and reduplication. The limits between juxtaposition of words in a 

 fixed order and of word composition are ill defined, since the inde- 

 pendent words that enter into the sentence are liable to considerable 

 phonetic modification, which is due entirelv to the closeness of the 

 connection of the adjoining elements. The phonetic decay of difl:erent 

 words, under these conditions, is not the same everywhere; and cer- 

 tain elements appear exclusively in combinations, so that the}'^ may be 

 considered as affixes. Prefixes, suffixes, and in some cases infixes, 

 occur, although the latter may have been originally prefixes which 

 appear now as incorporated in a compound, the parts of which are no 

 longer discernible. The total number of affixes, however, is small, the 

 entire number not reaching thirty-five. Composition of independent 

 words is r'^sorted to with great frequency. In these compounds the 

 subordinated element is usually modified by the elision of the terminal 

 vowel and the correlated modification of the preceding consonant, so 

 that the component parts form a very firm unit. Modifications of 

 terminal sound of one word and initial sound of the following word 

 occur in many cases, and express the syntactic relations of parts of 

 the sentence. Phonetic modification of prefixes and of suffixes, par- 

 ticularly of the pronominal elements, and irregularities of their posi- 

 tions, make the verbal forms of the Siouan languages very irregular 

 in appearance. Far-reaching- substitutions in the labial and dental 

 series occur in all dialects. 



Duplication of stems occurs in verbs and in some nouns derived from 

 them. It is almost always confined to the principal stem. The final 



§5 



