BOAS] 



HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 



1015 



27. 



Singular 



Plural 



28, 



29, 



50. 



The suffixes -yuaq little, -suaq great, and -aluaq former, else, 

 form their plurals by changing -uaq into -nit: e. g., 



Singular 



nunayyuaq 

 nunarsuaq 

 nunay aluaq 



Plural 



nunay yuit 



niinarsuit 



nunayalidt 



a little land 

 a great land 

 former land 



§22. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IRREGULARITIES IN THE FOR- 

 MATION OF THE PLURAL 



The formation of the plural of nouns is very irregular, notwith- 

 standing the fact that the plural forms all end in t. The chief ele- 

 ment in these irregular formations is a shift of the word-stress, com- 

 bined with a consonantal increase in the stem of the word. From 

 this we may conclude that there must be some connection between 

 these phenomena. Since the psychical factor must be considered the 

 primus motor in the life of the language, we see the cause of the quan- 

 titative change in the shift of the stress. I have set forth elsewhere 

 (Thalbitzer I, § 34) how I think this differentiation in the formation of 

 the plural may be explained. It is not necessary to suppose that the 

 general principle of the plural inflection bj^ adding t or it has ever 

 been set aside, or had to struggle with some other principle, but in 

 certain words the plural ending it was added after the full singular 

 stem (the absolutive) of the word instead of after the vocalic stem: 

 e. g., instead of making malik a wave assume the regular plural 

 form iiialiit^ the ending it was added after the final Z', no matter if this 

 h properly pointed out the singularity' of the notion; and thus a new 



§22 



