BOAS] HANDBOOK OF INDIAN LANGUAGES COOS 319 



The demonstrative pronoun shows a variety of forms, but does not 

 distinguish sharply between nearness or remoteness in relation to the 

 three pronominal persons. 



The numeral is very well developed, exhibiting special forms for the 

 ordinal, multiplicative, and the distributive, which are indicated by 

 means of suffixes. 



The syntactic structure of the Coos sentence is very simple, and is 

 characterized by the facility with which the different parts of speech 

 may shift their position without changing in the least the meaning of 

 the sentence. Incorporation and compound words are entirely absent, 

 and the various parts of speech are easily recognizable through their 

 suffixes. 



MORPHOLOGY (§§ 17-95) 



Prefixes (§§ 17-24) 



The number of prefixes is small. Three of the six prefixes found 



in this language — namely, the local, discriminative, and modal x 



must have originally expressed one general idea incorporating these 

 three concepts, because the phonetic resemblance between these suf- 

 fixes is too perfect to be a mere coincidence. In addition to these 

 prefixes, the article and the personal pronouns may be treated in this 

 chapter, as they are loosely prefixed to the nominal (or verbal) stems, 

 and in a great many cases form a phonetic unit with the words that 

 follow them. 



% It, The Articles 1e and hE 



The article Ie^ or A^, is used in the singular and plural alike, and 

 may denote a definite or indefinite object. The definite article 

 indicates an object that actually exists or that is intimately known 

 to the speaker. No fixed rules can be given for the occurrence of 

 the two different forms Ie and A^, but the following general prin- 

 ciple may be said to hold good: Ke tends to occur at the beginning of 

 a sentence and after words ending in vowels, dentals, and sibilants; 

 while Ie occurs in all other cases. 



Ke Jiatdfytms (1) mtx'sd'we^{^) hia'wat (3) Ke to'qmas (4) the wood- 

 pecker (4) is pecking at (3) the lucky (2) money (1) 20.15 



M'nl sto^q Ie dl'lol there stood the young man 22.27 



wdndj tcvne'henl hE di'lol thus was thinking the young man 

 24.13, 14 ..... 



e'riek' Ie L/td sticking out was the earth 6.7 § 17 



