BOAS] HANDBOOK OF INDIAN LANGUAGES CHUKCHEE 681 



To give emphasis to the word, the accent may be thrown upon the 

 last syllable, the vowel of which then changes to o. 



Chukchee tipenfii'ko' n < tipe' nfirhni\ 



Kor. Kam. tipenn'eko'n<.tipe'nn'ekin\ 1 attack him 



Kamchadal trpencijo'n<tipe'ncijin J 



MORPHOLOGY (§§ 25-129.) 

 §25. Morphological Processes 



The Chukchee group of languages uses a great variety of morpho- 

 logical processes for expressing grammatical relations. The unity of 

 the syntactic group which forms a close unit is maintained by a law 

 of vocalic harmony which requires that if one vowel of the unit is 

 strong, all the others, that may be either weak or strong, must also 

 take the strong form. This law does not act in any particular direc- 

 tion ; but whenever a strong vowel appears in any part of the word, 

 it strengthens all the other preceding and following vowels. In the 

 present condition of the language, this law is not quite strictly con- 

 fined to certain vowels ; but a few stems and endings that have no 

 vocalic element except auxiliary vowels are always strong. It may 

 be, of course, that here strong vocalic elements have been lost. 



Stems appear almost always with morphological affixes. Only par- 

 ticles and a number of nouns occur as independent members of the 

 sentence in the form of the simple stem, their independence being 

 indicated b}' their failure to modify their weak vowels in conformity 

 with the strong vowels of those words with which they are most 

 closely associated. The general occurrence of nominal affixes, and the 

 restriction of stem forms occurring independentlj' to certain phonetic 

 types of nouns, make it plausible that we are dealing here also with 

 a loss of older affixes. If this view should be correct, there would be 

 no forms of nouns or verbs and related classes of words without affixes. 

 Either the stems consist of consonantic clusters or they are monos}^]- 

 labic or pol3'S3^ liable. Only predicative stems consist of consonantic 

 clusters. Denominative stems have fuller phonetic values. In all 

 polysyllabic stems a certain symmetry of form is required by the laws 

 of vocalic harmony ; so that in the same stem we find, besides neutral 

 vowels, only strong vowels or only weak vowels. 



§25 



