ABSOLUTE AND DISTRIBUTIVE FORM. 463 



use of the suffix -ash in the mythic stories may be explained by a sort of 

 personification, or, in poetry, by the requirement of the rhythm. Phi forms 

 phi in the objective case when it signifies. /«/, f/rca.'it' ; but used as the proper 

 name of a person, it forms Phiash; slih'ta Ii/nx, though a quadruped, has no 

 form shh')ash, neither has yuhu buffalo: liu turn yuhu hudolish gi he killed 

 many buffaloes, though botli belong to the category of quadrupeds, which is 

 inflected like that of persons. Here the reason may be that these nouns 

 were made from finite verbs without change or suffixation, and finite verbs 

 being unable to take nominal endings, these substantives remained as they 

 were. 



The inflection of the Klamath verb contains no forms relating either to 

 animate or inanimate objects or subjects by making distinctions between 

 the two, as we see it done in Naluuitl by the objective incorporated parti- 

 cles te-, tla-, tetla-. The prefixes relating to shape, as ksh-, i-, ta- (t-), u- 

 and others, refer to one or several long objects or subjects without discrim- 

 inating between animate and inanimate. 



I have called the two genders by the names animate and inanimate, 

 but leave it to others to invent more appropriate designations, if any can 

 be found, as "noble and ignoble", "personal and impersonal", etc. 



Neither the Klamath pronoun nor the verb or substantive distinguishes 

 between the male and female sex by grammatic forms. Klamath does not 

 belong to the sex-denoting languages, and, indeed, the class is rather small 

 upon the Western Continent. Wherever a distinction of this sort is made 

 in the substantive, it is made by agglutinating some sexual distinction (cf. 

 95, 14) to the noun, as is done in some Tinne aud Maya languages and 

 in the Tonica. The Carib alone seems to have a real suffix for the fem- 

 inine. 



II. ABSOLUTE AND DISTRIBUTIVE FORM. 



Like the substantive of many other ao-ylutinative lang-uaffes, the Kla- 

 math sub-stantive possesses no special forms to indicate number, either for 

 the singular or dual and plural, and the plural number requires to be pointed 

 out by special words, as pronouns, adjectives, or numeral adjectives. When 

 the substantive is the subject of an intransitive verb, its dual and plural 



