ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 499 



noise made by people talking, which is snd'-nsitt, is thus resolved into two inde- 

 pendent radicals : snd' = ' name ' or ' word,' and nsut = • noise ' or ' sound.' Compare 

 with this the word tcS'anstit, which means ' noise ' as made by children playing 

 together. Numerous other examples may be found in the vocabulary. 



Gendee. 



Grammatical gender is not entirely wanting in the Sk'qO'mic as amongst the 

 N'tlaka'pamuQ. The article and the personal pronoun of the third person singular 

 (which, strictly speaking, is rather a demonstrative than a true pronoun) and the 

 possessive pronoun of the tirst person singular have distinct masculine and feminine 

 forms. Thus ts,' a,' or ' the ' (masc), tlk; ' a ' or ' the ' (fem.) ; tai or te, ' he ; ' d'tU, 

 'she;' tEn, 'my' (masc); Ueh,, "my' (fern.). These possessives, monosyllabic 

 though they be, are compound forms derived from the articles te and He and n, the 

 characteristic element of the first personal pronoun. It is the same 'n or eti = ' my,' 

 as we find in N'tlaka'pamuQ, and which appears so constantly in the irregular' verbal 

 forms of the first person singular in all our Salish dialects. The usage of these 

 pronouns is interesting. The function of gender is peculiar. As gender is wanting 

 to the Sk-qo'mic substantive, there can be no agreement between the possessive and 

 the thing possessed, as in the classic tongues. The gender of the pronoun in any 

 given sentence depends entirely upon the sex of the speaker. A woman must 

 always say <Zk«, and a man ^£71. Thus, tlEnVdva, 'my house,' by ihe woman, and 

 fEH lam by the man. This is the general usage of the two forms. Even in such 

 instances as when the speaker uses terms which are applied exclusively to males or 

 females, such as ' husband,' ' wife,' ' father,' ' mother,' ' brother,' ' sister,' &.C., where 

 the distinct form gives a kind of gender to the word, the possessive does not agree 

 in gender with the substantive, as might, on the analogy of classic usage, be ex- 

 pected. It would be impossible for a man to say ' tlsti tcuwa'c,' ' my wife,' or a 

 woman to say ' tsji sko',' ' my husband ; ' the combination would be ridiculous. There 

 is, however, an interesting exception to this general rule. Whenever a general term 

 expressive alike of 'male' and 'female' is employed, then both men and women 

 place tlEu before the word when they are speaking of a female, and tem when they 

 are referring to a male, thus: tlE7i weh, 'my daughter,' and tE7i viEn, ' m}' son,' 

 the function of the possessive here being to give the gender to the noun. 



The function of the article is quite different from that of the pronoun, the form 

 employed in any given expression depending in no way upon the sex of the speaker. 

 It conforms rather to classic usage, and its gender is ' governed ' by the gender of 

 the noun it is qualifying. But, as I have already stated, as there is no grammatical 

 gender of the noun in Skqo'mic, the division into masculine and feminine terms is 

 rather a mental than a formal process. Of neuter forms there are none, the distinc- 

 tion being impossible to the Indian mind. In his conception every object in nature, 

 animate and inanimate, is a sentient being, possessing a character and individuality 

 of its own, and has therefore male or female attributes. The Sk-qo'mic child learns 

 to distinguish in his mind masculine 'ideas' from feminine ones just in the same 

 unconscious way as he learns his mother's tongue, and in ordinary discourse has no 

 more trouble over his article than a French child has over his. Indeed, in the 

 matter of concord the use of the article in the Sk qo'mic and French closely agrees, 

 but in Sk-qo'mic the article has usages peculiar to the language, being used in a 

 variety of ways unfamiliar to us in the French. For example we fiijd it in such 

 sentences as the following: ' netl tE Harry,' 'it is Harry;' 'netl tlE Mary,' 'it is 

 Mary.' It is also employed wiih the personal pronouns in certain expressions where 

 it seems to have a prepositional force, thus : ' hauq mekauq haua tls uns ? ' (or tu 

 uns, according as the ' me ' is male or female), ' Will you not come mith me 1 ' and 

 also with the personal and possessive pronouns generally (see under ' Pronouns '). It 

 is also invariably placed before proper and tribal names, closely resembling in this 

 respect in form and function the usage of the article in Polynesian. Besides these 

 grammatical distinctions of pronominal and demonstrative gender we find the 

 ordinary distinctions of separate words to denote male and female objects, 

 thus : — 



sue'ka, man ; stla'nai, woman ; 



suekao'tl, boy ; stlanaio'tl, girl ; 



sue'wolo's, youth ; k-a'mai, maiden ; 



mama, father ; tci'ca, mother ; 



ee'sae, uncle ; t^a'ata, aunt, 



kk2 



