PERSONAL INFLECTION. 579 



h. Plurality is shown by the noun being a collective, or one of the sub- 

 stantives designating persons, which jDOssess a form for the real plural. 



c. The large majority of substantives having no real plural, their plu- 

 rality is indicated in the intransitive verbs connected with them by the 

 distributive form of the vei"b, and in a few transitive verbs, like sta-ila. 

 liiela, by a special form which has also a distributive function. 



d. When there are but two, three, or, at the utmost, four subjects to 

 certain intransitive verbs, the dual form of the latter will be used. Cf. 

 Verbal Inflection, pages 437-441. 



PERSONAL INFLECTION. 



In his choice between the analytic and one of the synthetic forms 

 combining the subject and object pronoun into one word with the verb, the 

 speaker is guided entirely by the impulse of the moment. If he intends to 

 lay any stress on the personal pronoun, he will place it at the head of the 

 sentence, or at least before the verb, which usually stands at the end, or he 

 repeats the pronoun. The synthetic form of the subject-pronoun is less 

 frequent than the other, and not every person has a form for it. In the 

 second person of the plural it might be confounded with the imperative, 

 and hence it is more frequently used only in the first singular and plural 

 and in the third plural. Object-pronouns, like mish thee, to thee, are placed 

 between the verb and the subject-pronoun : 



shli-uapkamsha they will shoot you (for mish sha). 

 ne-ulakuapkamshni I shall punish you. 



A list of all the possible syntheses of personal pronouns is presented 

 above (pages 548. 549). 



TENSE-FORMS OF THE VERB. 



There are only two tense-forms of the verb — the simple verb-form, 

 generally ending in -a, and the form of the incompleted act, with suffix 

 -uapka. Nevertheless all tenses of the English verb can be expressed with 

 accuracy by these two forms, when supplemented or not by temporal par- 

 ticles, and by the substantive verb gi in its various inflectional forms. To 



