172 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY rBULL.40 



carries the umlaut of -am- to -im- with it, but -am- reappears when 

 -i- drops out, cf. inferential ddmxamk.'elt'. With the -i- of these 

 forms compare the -i- of the first person plural intransitives -i¥, 

 -iga'm, -iba^ (§ 60 and § 60, second footnote). 



§ 64. Connecting -x- and -/- 



It will have been observed that in all forms but those provided 

 with a third personal object the endings are not directly added to 

 the stem, but are joined to it by a connecting consonant -x- (amalga- 

 mating with preceding -t- to -&•-) . This element we have seen to be 

 identical with the -x- (s-) of reciprocal forms; and there is a possi- 

 bOity of its being related to the -xa- of active intransitive verbs, 

 hardly, however, to the non-agentive -x-. Though it appears as a 

 purely formal, apparently meaningless element, its original function 

 must have been to indicate the objective relation in which the 

 immediately following pronominal suffix stands to the verb. From 

 this point of view it is absent in a third personal object form simply 

 because there is no expressed pronominal element for it to objectivize, 

 as it were. The final aoristic consonant of Type 8 verbs regularly 

 disappears before the connecting -x-, so that its retention becomes 

 a probably secondary mark of a third personal pronominal object. 

 The fact that the third personal objective element -¥wa- (-gwa-) does 

 not tolerate a preceding connective -x- puts it in a class by itself, 

 affiliating it to some extent with the derivational suffixes of the verb. 



There are, comparatively speaking, few transitive stems ending in 

 a vowel, so that it does not often happen that the subjective personal 

 endings, the third personal object being unexpressed, are directly 

 attached to the verb or aorist stem, as in : 



naga'^n I say to him 72.9, cf. naga^ he said to him 92.24 



sehe'n I shall roast it (44.6) ; future imperative odo'^F hunt for 

 him! (116.7) 

 Ordinarily forms involving the third personal object require a con- 

 necting vowel between the stem and the pronominal suffix. Not all 

 verbs, however, show the purely non-significant -a- of, e. g., t.'omoma'^n, 

 but have a to a large extent probably functional -i-. This -i- occurs 

 first of all in all third personal object forms of verbs that have an 

 instrumental prefix: 



tslayaga'^n I shoot him (192.10), but wa-ts!ayagi'^n I shoot (him) 

 with it 



%-lats!agiY you touched it 



§ 64 



