BOAS] HANDBOOK OP AMERICAN INDIAN LANGTJAGES 1003 



middle suffixes {iaar^ qe)\ qiiwa), and a final element {atit). In this 

 chapter we shall consider onl}'^ the final elements, which are the proper 

 inflectional forms and represent the most important, because the 

 most f requentl}^ used, grammatical elements of the language. 



§ 14. Base and Stem 



Most words of the Eskimo language have two or several inflectional 

 stems. The shortest stem is often identical with the base, and may 

 be an obsolete stem. The base, from this point of view, is the primary 

 stem, or the smallest number of sounds of which the word can consist, 

 without losing its close resemblance to the actual forms of the word; 

 we will call this the base of derivation. 



The inflectional stem, or stems, are the secondary or expanded 

 stems, which have originated in the history of the language, owing 

 partly to sufiixation and partly to phonetic changes in the bases of 

 the word. 



In the dialects of West Greenland (the northernmost at Smith 

 sound excepted), all words end either in one of the vowels a, e, o, or 

 in one of the consonants jj, t^ k, q. Of these sounds, only final ^^ is 

 confined to a certain class of words (viz., nouns), whereas the other 

 final sounds are common to all classes of words. Words that end in a, 

 e, or o, or in q^ whether nouns or verbs, are always singular forms; h 

 is the dual character, t the plural character; but there are nouns that 

 end in h or t in the singular; e. g., inuk A ]vian, an Eskimo; sdnimt 



TOOL. 



In studying the bases of Eskimo words we shall soon see that sev- 

 eral of them end in other sounds than we are accustomed to find in 

 actual words of modern Eskimo; e. g., in^, u^ or I (l) (see § 15). The 

 Eskimo bases are either monosyllabic or bisyllabic; the stems appear 

 to be bases widened by one or two sounds, and sometimes also affected 

 by change of stress. From this point of view, the bases are hypo- 

 thetical forms, secondary as compared with the words of the modern 

 language; i. e., they have been reconstructed from these words for 

 purposes of comparison. They are the explanatory connecting-links 

 between related modern words, which may often be found to be very 

 dissimilar. 



On the other hand, if bases of this language occur which may end 

 in other sounds than those nowadays found as the terminations of 

 modern words, we are not bound to think that they end thus merely 



§14 



