158 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



imperative is not to be carried out until some stated or implied point 

 of time definitely removed from the immediate present, as in come 

 to-morrow!, give her to eat (when she recovers). The uses of the 

 potential and inferential will be best illustrated by examples given 

 after the forms themselves have been tabulated. In a general way 

 the potential implies the ability to do a thing, or the possibility of 

 the occurrence of a certain action or condition (i can, could go if I 

 care, cared to), and thus is appropriately used in the apodosis of an 

 unfulfilled or contrary-to-fact condition; it is also regularly employed 

 in the expression of the negative imperative (prohibitive). The 

 peculiar form of the potential (verb-stem with aorist pronoun endings) 

 seems in a measure to reflect its modal signification, the identity of 

 its stem with that of the future indicating apparently the lack of 

 fulfillment of the action, while the aoristic pronominal elements may 

 be interpreted as expressing the certainty of such fulfillment under 

 the expressed or implied circumstances by the person referred to. 

 The inferential implies that the action expressed by the verb is not 

 directly known or stated on the authority of the speaker, but is only 

 inferred from the circumstances of the case or rests on the authority 

 of one other than the speaker. Thus, if I say the bear killed the 

 MAN, and wish to state the event as a mere matter of fact, the truth 

 of which is directly known from my own or another's experience, the 

 aorist form would normally be employed : 



mena^ (bear) yap! a (man) t!omd¥wa (it killed him) 



If I wish, however, to imply that it is not definitely known from 

 unmistakable evidence that the event really took place, or that it is 

 inferred from certain facts (such as the finding of the man's corpse 

 or the presence of a bear's footprints in the neighborhood of the 

 house) , or that the statement is not made on my own authority, the 

 inferential would be employed: 



mena' yap.'a ddmVwaV it seems that the bear killed the man; 

 the bear must have, evidently has, killed the man 



Inasmuch as mythical narration is necessarily told on hearsay, one 

 would expect the regular use of the inferential in the myths; 3^et, 

 in the great majority of cases, the aorist was employed, either because 

 the constant use of the relatively uncommon inferential forms would 

 have been felt as intrusive and laborious, or because the events 

 related in the myths are to be looked upon as objectively certain. 

 § 59 



