BOAS] 



HANDBOOK OF INDIAN LANGUAGES — TAKELMA 



177 



It is remarkable that several verbs with instrumental vocalism lose 

 the -i- and substitute the ordinary connective -a- in the frequentative. 

 Such are: 



%-go'y6k!\^n I nudge him ; l-goyogiy&'^n I keep pushing him 

 dV-tlV's'i'^n I crush it; dl^-t!iyi't!iysi^n I keep crushing them 



It can hardly be accidental that in both these cases the loss of the 

 -i- is accompanied by the loss of a petrified consonant (-Ic!-, -s-). 



The following scheme of the instrumental forms of do^m- kill 

 (third personal object) will best illustrate the phonetic behavior 

 of -i- : 



§ 65. Forms Without Connecting Vowel 

 A considerable number of transitive verbs whose aorist stem ends 

 in a long diphthong with rising pitch (long vowel + semivowel, nasal, 

 or liquid) treat this diphthong as a vocalic unit, i. e., do not allow 

 the second element of the diphthong to become semivocalic and thus 

 capable of being followed by a connective -a- before the personal 

 endings (cf. intransitive forms like ei-f, § 60). If such a long diph- 

 thong is final, or precedes a consonant (like -t') that is itself incapable 

 of entering into diphthongal combination with a preceding vowel, no 

 difficulty arises. If, however, the long diphthong precedes an -n- 

 (in such endings as -^n, -n, -na¥), which, as has been seen, is pho- 

 netically on a line with the semivowels y (i) and w (w), a long double 

 diphthong (long vowel + semivowel, nasal, or liquid + n of time-value 

 4) results. Such a diphthong can not be tolerated, but must be 

 reduced to an ordinary long diphthong of time-value 3 by the loss of 

 the second element (semivowel, nasal, or liquid) of the diphthong of 

 the stem (see § 11). Thus the coexistence of such apparently contra- 

 dictory forms as da/^-yehetC you go where there is singing and 

 daJ^-yehen (with passive -n) it was gone where there was singing 

 (from ^ifeJiem) can be explained by a simple consideration of syllabic 

 3045°— Bull. 40, pt 2—12 12 S 65 



