swANTiiN] THE TLINGIT AND HAIDA LANGUAGES 473 



tlie ^^lln^nil^v whii'h follows, 5S1 Tliii<;it and 351 Ilaida roots are com- 

 pared with reference to their phonetic composition, v standing for 

 consonant and v for vowel: 



(■ cv eve cvcc cc ccv cccv ccvt- \' w \ri' 



Tlingit 17 155 :it>7 10 7 L'4 1 



Haida 13 120 i:« 1 4 :io 1 :iO (i 7 1 



It ajiptMii's from this that the combination eve is the most common 

 in both languages, although the preponderance is moi-(> marked in 

 Tlingit than in Haida, and that the coml)inatioii c\ stands s(>cond. 

 Proportionally, stems consisting of single consonants and single \owels 

 appear to be more numerous in Haida, but nearly ail the existing 

 stems of this character are prohabl}' included in the above enumera- 

 tion. The 13 consonant stems in Ilaida are made up lai'gely of the 

 sounds, i, i, and /, to which something of a vocalic character always 

 attaches, while the 17 Tlingit stems are nearly all pure consonant 

 sounds. Actually, therefore, single consonants may l)e said to be 

 more extensively employed with grammatic signiticance in Tlingit, a 

 fact in consonance with the sliort, choppj^ character of that tongue. 

 The com])ination vc is also represented more largely in Tlingit. It is 

 curious tliat while the nuud)er of stems of this type is comparatively^ 

 small they aie usually stems of fundamental importance. 



Perhaps tlie most striking difference between these lists is the occur- 

 rence of combinations cc, cv\, cccv, and ccvc in Haida, which are 

 entirely absent from Tlingit. It nmst be said, however, that the initial 

 consonant in such cases is always .s or an / sound — /, i, i, or / — a cir- 

 cumstance which leads one to suspect that there is some particular rea- 

 son for these coml)inations yet to be disclosed. In case they have 

 l)een formed from descriptive terms it would be j)ossible to account 

 for those witli initial .v by su})posing that s represents the Tlingit 

 indicative prelix .s-, which is always placed immediately before the 

 verb stem. In the same way initial /and i- might be suppos(>d to rep- 

 resent the Tlingit verlial prefixes / antl J-, wliich are also plai'cd iumie- 

 diately before the stem. Besides mere morphological similarity, how- 

 ever, the only ]K)int that may be said positively to favor tliis view is 

 the fact tiiat Haida stems of the kind are generally utterly divergent 

 from Tlingit stems of corresponding meaning. This is what would be 

 expected if some form retained in Tlingit were replaced elsewhere by 

 a descriptive j)lirase. Th<^ secontl consonant in the forms cc is always 

 /-, f-, or /, to w liich. as before said, something of a vocalic character 

 attaches. 



All this would appear to indicate that the great majority of syllables 

 in the two languages primitively belonged to the types cv and cvc, 

 and. while the r('lati\-e j)ro])ortion of tlie type cvc in Tlingit is very 

 nuich greater than in Haida, there are certain reasons for (pialifying 

 tiic iniixirtaiice of this diti'erenci!. In Tlingit, for instance, we have 



