26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Ibull.g;! 



Senor fista's vocabulary was gathered from a "Guaicaro" medi- 

 cine-man, all of whose people had passed away and who was then 

 living among the Tehuelches. Dr. Coppinger's list was gathered by 

 signs, though he carefully verified it in part among other natives. 

 All the other extant Alacalufan material, except perhaps G, so far as 

 our information goes, was gathered by signs. 



Under such circumstances we should naturally look for a good per- 

 centage of errors in the Bo-Sk group as well as in the H-Fi group. 

 The most exact of the extant lists, judging from the circumstances 

 under which they were collected and from their mutual agreement, 

 are Bo, Be, Sk, Fe, Cy, and G. Only in the case of Bo (and G ? and 

 Be ?) did the observers speak at all the natives' own language. 



Some further differences between H-Fi and the other group may 

 well be due to the presence of synonyms. The Alacalufan language 

 is evidently, like the Yahgan, poor in abstract and rich in concrete 

 terms (cf. Sk, Bo). The Yahgan contains many synonyms (Th. 

 Bridges, li, 235-236; Hyades, q^, 280), and so apparently does the 

 Alacaluf (cf. Cy, Bo). Nuances of meaning are often expressed by 

 entirely dissimilar words (cf. Sk, Bo). Certain words, too, are, it 

 seems, of local use — Emilia knew the word tscharkou^, "fire," but did 

 not use it, while she did not know either Tcaoui, "ear," or noelli, 

 "nose" (Skottsberg, d, 613.-614). 



That the above sources have actually caused many divergences in 

 the vocabularies and many errors is further evidenced (1) by the 

 number of cases in which the same idea is expressed by different 

 words in each of the lists and (2) by the number of words in the lists 

 belonging to the Sk-Bo group, especially Co, Li, Lu, Se, Si, and Ir, 

 which bear no resemblance to any words in the other lists of this 

 group. Dr. Coppinger's vocabulary, for instance, which manifestly 

 represents in the main the same language as Sk, as Dr. Skottsberg 

 recognizes {e, 412), differs from Sk-Bo almost as much as H and Fi 

 do. Or compare some of the words in Lu and Se, both taken from 

 the same troupe of natives: nose — Lu, cMia're-Jcwa, Se, nosqua; 

 hand — Lu, dero'alehl-kwa, Se, corocascJiqua. 



Before concluding it seems necessary to say a few words regarding 

 Dr. Skottsberg's recent theory (a, xxxii, 593, d and e). From a care- 

 ful comparison of his own vocabulary with H, Fi, Fe, Sp, and Cy, he 

 concluded that there is in Fuegia a fourth linguistic stock quite dis- 

 tinct from the Alacalufan. For this fourth stock, to which belong 

 Fe, Cy, Sp, Co, Sk, and many words in Fi, he suggests the name 

 "West Patagonian" {d, 581, 611-614; e, 412). 



Dr. Skottsberg, however, did not utilize a great part of the avail- 

 able material for comparison, namely. Bo, Be, G, Si, Li, Se, Lu, and 

 Ir, his study being based on Sk, H, Fi, Fe, Cy, Sp, and Co. He has 

 not given due weight, moreover, to the community of element, stem. 



