66 BUREAU OF AMERICAN" ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



the sentence, no matter what part the word plays in the sentence. 

 Thus in a form like 7ne'^-di-ginigaY did you come ? ( = me^- hither + 

 di- interrogative particle + ginigaY you went to), the modal (inter- 

 rogative) element di regularly stands nearest the verb ; but as soon as 

 another word is introduced before the verb, the interrogative particle 

 shoves back a step, and we have a form of sentence like, e. g., Tioida'^s 

 di me' ^ginigaY did you come as singer, i. e., to sing? From this 

 it becomes fairly evident that the di in the first example is not prop- 

 erly a verbal prefix at all, but merely a post-positive particle depend- 

 ing upon the preceding me'^, in the same way that, in the second 

 example, it depends upon the noun Jioida'^s singer. This inference 

 is clinched by a form like giniga'fidi did you go (somewhere) ? 

 for here the di is evidently an enclitic element, not a prefix. 



In sharp contradistinction to such movability, the body-part and 

 adverbial prefixes occupy rigidly fixed positions before the verb; 

 they therefore belong to a class quite distinct from the modal parti- 

 cles. These latter are verbal prefixes only in so far as their post- 

 positive tendency may force them to become embedded in the 

 verb-complex, in which case they seem to cut loose the incorporated 

 object, adverbial prefix, and instrumental element from the verb. 

 Diagrammatically the last form tabulated may be represented by 

 xa-i- [ml'^^wa] -sgi'^hi^n. We may then dismiss the modal elements 

 from our consideration of verbal prefixes, to return to them when 

 speaking of connective and adverbial particles. 



§ 35. INCORPORATED NOUNS 



It may seem strange at first sight to interpret in the examples 

 given above such elements as hem sticks, gwdn road, and da^n rocks 

 as incorporated objects, when they occur as absolute nouns in that 

 form as well, though a faint suggestion of incorporation is given 

 by gwan-ha-yaxa-t!uluHga'^n i keep following the trail, in that 

 the modal post-positive yaxa follows not gwan, but rather 7ia-, as 

 though the direct object were not quite felt to be an element inde- 

 pendent of the verb. Without laying particular stress on this latter 

 point, there are, it would seem, good reasons for considering the 

 nouns referred to as incorporated, though in any event the incor- 

 poration must be called a loose one, and not at all comparable with 

 the Iroquois usage. 



§ 35 



