THE OBJECTIVE CASE. 471 



plants cannot form the transitional and the temporal cases, and the loca- 

 tive, instrumental and adessive are wanting with many of them also. 



1. The suhjective case. 



The subjective and only direct case most frequently terminates in -sh, 

 -s, the universal noun-making suffix, which we have found to occur also in 

 the nominal forms of the verb. The vowel usually preceding it has fre- 

 quently been elided, as in terminals like -ksli, -Ish, -ntch, and others. The 

 identity of this most frequent of all nominal suffixes with that of the verbal 

 indefinite conclusively proves that the majority of all substantives are but 

 the nominal expression of the verbal idea that they are either nomhta acforis 

 and agentis, or nomina adionis and acti. Cf Suffixes, pages 323, 339, 362, 368. 



But there are many other suffixes than -sh capable of terminating sub- 

 stantives, for almost every sound which can close a word can also terminate 

 a noun in its subjective case. We have seen that the nouns in -p and a few 

 of those in -sh drop these endings when they become inflected; a few nouns, 

 as pAta, mpatash milt, show two forms, the one with and the other without 

 the -sh. All this testifies to their immediate derivation from verbs. These 

 same suffixes are also dropped before certain affixes of an adnominal or 

 participial nature agglutinated to them, e. g. : 



shiiks crane, Shuk=amtch Old Crane of mythic fame, 

 p'tishaj) father, p'tish=lulsh deceased father. 



2. Objective case in -ash. 



The direct object or complement of the verb, as well as its indirect object, 

 is expressed by the objective case in -ash, abbr. -ish, -esh, -'sh This case 

 therefore corresponds to the accusative and to the dative case of the classic 

 languages, sometimes to others of their cases besides. In its origin it is 

 nearly identical with the suffix of the subjective case -sh (-s), and in this 

 regard we may recall the fact that some of the Romanic languages have 

 formed their subjective case from the Latin accusative: homem (Portu- 

 guese) from hominem man, rien (Fi'ench) from rem thing; in German we 

 have Namen, Samen, together with Name, Same, the former representing 

 in fact an objective case. In the Klamath a remnant of this sort is found in 



