102 JOCHELSON 



mo' do to sit. 



madd' to begin the act of sitting, sit down, instead of mo' dod^ 

 in which case o and a combine into one long a (see § 92). 



<? is a weak vowel, and g and k, when preceding or following 

 it, change respectively into the corresponding sounds g and x, 

 as may be seen from the examples, e and a are strong vowels. 



Not all consonants can begin words. The Yukaghir avoid : 



1. Clusters of two consonants at the beginning of a word. 

 When pronouncing Russian words beginning with two con- 

 sonants, the Yukaghir will either drop the first (for example, 

 Russian word Staru' xa^ ** old woman," is pronounced by the 

 Yukaghir tei'i' kc), or they will precede the word by the vowel 

 i (for example, the Russian word sta'riy, " old," is transformed 

 into i' ctcrci). 



2. r at the beginning of a word. 



3. The occurrence of b, g, g,J, and d, either at the beginning 

 or the end of a word. In such cases, these letters change into 

 the corresponding surds/, k, c, and t. 



The first syllable is usually accented in the Yukaghir lan- 

 guage. This is an almost invariable rule with dissyllables. 

 There are very few exceptions to this rule ; for example, ajn' 

 ('* word "), emc'i ('* mother "), Icbic' (" earth "), and some post- 

 positions, like fo/a' ("after"), iji'e (**self"), a/d' ("near"). 



Trisyllables are usually accented on the second syllable ; 

 but so far I have been unable to establish a rule. This would 

 require a comparative study of a large number of words, which 

 will be made in the elaboration of the dictionary. 



Tetrasyllables or polysyllables are mostly accented on the 

 first syllable ; but many of them acquire an additional accent, 

 which is usually put on the possessive element of the suffix. 

 I have marked the additional accent by means of a grave 

 accent (' ). 



Very few words are accented on the third syllable, as, for 

 instance, pojevxo' (" day ") ; but I heard some people pronounce 

 po'jerxo. 



In adding suffixes to dissyllables, the accent passes to the 

 second syllable: nii' uio ("house"), numo' ge (c. loc), but also 



