59-t 



REPORT — 1892. 



This u.se of independent and composition forms, differing in the way indicated 

 above, is very extensive in Kootenay, but the manner in which the differentiation of the 

 two is brought about — simply by the addition or the subtraction of particles, each of 

 which no doubt will be discovered in time to have some definite signification — marks 

 the language off from those tongues in which a similar distinction is brought about, 

 according to some writers, by the arbitrary dropping of one or more letters of the 

 independent form. These letters, however, may ultimately be found to have each its 

 particular meaning, and then the arbitrary cutting down "of a word, so much spoken 

 of, may be explained as a regular grammatical process. 



The independent, and the compo.sition forms in Koorenay appear to be from the 

 same radical, which fact distinguishes the language from those tongues in which there 

 is often no connection between the independent form of a word and the form used in 

 composition. 



