578 GRAMMAR OF THE KLAMATH LANGUAGE. 



THE SUBJECT OF THE VERB. 

 The subject of the noun-verb, or, as I will henceforth call it for con- 

 venience, of the V e r b", stands in the subjective case, whether it apjiears as 

 substantive, adjective, participle, or pronoun. This, of course, applies only 

 to the subject of the finite verb; the subject of verbals, as the verbal defi- 

 nite and indefinite, follows other rules to be mentioned below. When the 

 subject is a personal pronoun, it is often repeated and, curiously enough, 

 without any special emphasis being attached to it: 



tfds tales mi'sh ni kuixsi m's ni I know you pretty well, 65, 10. 



tankt ni snii^kglui-uapka ni then I shall remove (him), ,59, 17. 



Especially in songs subject-pronouns are scattered in profusion; cf 

 pages 176-178 and first Note. Just as frequently, a personal pronoun is 

 omitted altogether whenever it can be readily supplied from the context. 

 So, in 30, 7, nat we in omitted before ga-ni%a, because it stands in the ser.- 

 tence preceding it; cf. also at ye before pa-uapk, in 70, 4. 



When a transitive verb is used passively, the grammatic subject stands 

 in the subjective, and the person or thing by which the act is performed in 

 the possessive case, which often figures as the logical subject;* or it in 

 expressed by a possessive pronoun. 



That an oblique case can figure as the subject of the sentence, as in 

 Sahaptin dialects, of this we have an instance for an intransitive verb in 

 the incantation 158; 48: kailanti nil shilshila, which is interpreted by the 

 Indians themselves as: "I, the earth, am resounding like thunder within 

 (-nti) myself" An oblique case thus figures as the verbal subject. This 

 recalls the circumstance that, from certain case-forms, as yamat north, 

 ka'mat hack, le-ushara flower, new substantives originate with the above as 

 thieir subjective cases. 



The plural number of the subject of the sentence may be indicated in 

 the following different ways: 



a. Plurality is indicated analytically by adding to the noun a numeral 

 or an indefinite pronoun, like ki'nka, tumi;iga a few, n;inka some, nanuk all, 

 tumi many. 



• From HOR. Hale's Notes on the Nez-Perc^ Language and PaVdosy's Fofcomo Grammar, we 

 gather that in some Sahaptin dialects the sabjectivo case is supplanted by the possessive, even when 

 the verb is used iu the active sense. 



