PHONOLOGY. 215 



separates compound words into their components : wika=te'lantko 

 short-featured, 161oks=wa'genam=stu railroad, lit. "fire-wagon's 

 road." 

 ' acute accent; tlie only sign used for emphasizing syllables: t^lish 



face, tila and tila to roll, to flood. 

 — vowel pronounced long: ta'^tki to blush, tchla'l;(a to be drowned, 



wo'ksla, etc. 

 vowel pronounced short : ma'sh species of plant, sAlkSkish necktie. 



LARYNGEAL MODE OF UTTERANCE. 



The phonetics of the majority of American languages cannot be fully 

 understood without taking in consideration their mode of pronunciation 

 from the throat. It may be defined as an utterance produced by a power- 

 ful gush of breath emitted from the lungs and forming its sounds, through 

 the glottis widely opened, in tlie rear portion of the mouth rather than in its 

 fore parts. The war-whoops and dance-songs of the Dakota and other 

 Mississippian tribes are but a series of vocal strains due alone to the action 

 of the lungs and windpipe, and ejected through tlie open glottis. This gives 

 a peculiar, weird character to their vocal music. Of the Gayap6 Indians, 

 who inhabit the Brazilian province of Goyaz, travelers report that their 

 language sounds "as coming from the upper throat, and that they speak 

 with the mouth closed."* The real cause of these peculiarities has to be 

 souglit for in the Indian mode of living, and may also in part be attributed 

 to assumed habits of pronunciation. 



The pectoral or laryngeal pronunciation of tlie Klamath Indian is 

 attendeil by the following phonologic consequences: 



1. Guttural and laryngeal (h, arrested sound) sounds preponderate in 

 frequency over dentals and labials, being formed in the rear part of the 

 vocal tube. The palatal and alveolar sounds, which by the lifting of the 

 tongue to the roof of the mouth tend to confine the sound to the rear, are 

 not unfrequent in this and other languages, while in most of them f, th, 

 r, and others, which are produced in its fore parts only, do not exist. The 



*Dr. Pliil. von Martius, "Beitrage zur Etlinographie Amerikas"; Vol. II, p. 134. 



