ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 376 



definite article, may also be said to possess formal gender, though it is only a 

 borrowed one. The same applies also to the so-called gender of the possessive 

 pronoun of the first person singular and the personal pronoun of the third person. 

 But, strictly speaking, it is only the definite article which possesses a formal gender; 

 the seeming gender of the other forms arising from their coalescence with this. 

 I did not fully understand this in my study of the Sk-qo'mic, where the pronominal 

 and demonstrative gender is exactly the same as in the Halkome'lEm tongues, and 

 attributed to these terms, as Dr. Boas had before me, a formal gender of their own. 

 This is clearly incorrect. They possess no true gender of their own; in every 

 instance it is the presence of the accompanying article or demonstrative that gives 

 the gender. Thus, we say beI tEl, my mother ; tEl mem, my father ; se la, she ; 

 tE la, he ; se la slu'li, this woman ; and tE la srve'Eka, this man ; but in every case 

 we are using the definite article, and obtaining our formal gender from it. Every 

 one of these terms is compound ; seI and tsl are se and tE compounded with the 

 pronominal element I (the n of other Salish dialects). And in the se la and tE la 

 forms we have the same se and te compounded with the adverbial particle la (the 

 na of other dialects). These latter forms stand, as I have said, equally as pronouns 

 of the third person and as demonstratives. Thus it is clear that there is no true 

 pronominal gender in these iSalish dialects, as has been hitherto supposed. Even in 

 the tu'-tla or tau'-tla and sau'-tla forms, signifying ' he ' and ' she ' respectively, we 

 have the same definite article; though its closer coalescence with the other 

 elements of the compound obscvires its presence here in some degree. 



Besides this formal distinction of gender by use of the article, we find the 

 usual distinction of separate words to denote male and female ; thus : — 



swe'Eka, man. sla'li, woman. 



sweEka'tl, boy. ka'k-ami, girl, 



swe'wilus, youth. k-'a'mi, maiden. # 



mEm or mEl, father. tat or tEl, mother, 



swa'kuts, husband. sta'lus, wife. 



In speaking of animals, sex is distinguished by placing modified forms of the 

 terms for ' man ' and ' woman ' before or after the class word, thus :^- 



dog, swewe'Eka skwomai' ; bitch, slEsla'lI skwomai'. 



In speaking of birds the sex is marked by a special term for the male bird, 

 thus:— All male birds whose plumage differentiates them from the female are 

 called by the term stE'mtEm ; all large birds whose plumage does not markedly 

 differentiate them from the females are called simply matik-, the female being sld'li 

 maulf (mauk* is the term for ' duck ' ; it appears to be a generic for ' bird,' as 

 sml'yits = ' deer ' is for animal) ; and all small male birds not markedly differentiated 

 by plumage from the female are called me'Emuh ; the female, slu'li mt:' EnvuU. 



I have already called attention to the numerous roles reduplication plays in the 

 Salish tongues. In the examples used here to mark gender of animals we have a 

 notable illustration of its elastic character. The reduplication in swerve' Elta carries 

 with it a sense of nobility, greatness, superiority, might ; while in sIesIu'II it carries 

 the opposite sense of meanness, smallness, inferiority, weakness. These distinctions 

 are used throughout the whole vocabulary. Anything that is large, strong, fine, or 

 excellent, is sicBtvB' Eka, or masculine ; anything that is small, weak, mean or con- 

 temptible, is slEsldll, or feminine.' 



CASE. 



I have already said that case distinctions are wanting to the Salish tongues of 

 British Columbia, and the Tcil'Qe'uk presents no exception to this rule. The relations 

 expressed by the case endings of the classic tongues are supplied by particles, as in 

 English and other analytical languages. In certain constructions the noun seems to 



' We have here a fine glimpse of the primitive mind evolving genderal distinctions. 

 Under the conditions of savage life any other view than that taken by the Salish 

 tribesmen would seem to be impossible. Our own Aryan ancestors apparently took 

 the same view, for our grammars of to-day speak of the masculine as the ' nobler 

 gender.' The phrase would appear to be an unconscious reminiscence of earlier a^d 

 ruder conditions of life. 



