138 JOCHELSON 



Ta/? u^ /ig-et (^h\a.tive of ta'biin, "that") replaces the illative 

 conjunction tJierefor.e. 



Ta' tine den' ne (" and for this reason ") is the subjunctive mode 

 of the intransitive verb tatme (** to be such "). 



The adverb <^/ (" again ") is sometimes used instead of our 

 conjunction and\ 



Ti'tel ya'xteni ai lo'hdohi They sang and danced. 



Concluding Remarks. 



The morphological peculiarities of the language may be 

 summed up in the following main propositions. 



Word-formation is accomplished mainly by means of suffixes ; 

 but prefixes are also used (almost exclusively in connection 

 with verbal forms). In this respect the language differs from 

 those of the Ural-Altaic group, which use suffixes only, and 

 approaches the American languages. 



The possessive suffixes of nouns is but little developed (except 

 in the third person) ; the language thus differing from the Ural- 

 Altaic, as well as from the Eskimo dialects. 



Sound harmony of vowels {a and o should not occur in the 

 same word), is little developed, and in this respect the language 

 resembles some of the Indian dialects, but differs absolutely from 

 the Ural-Altaic languages with their intricate system of vowel- 

 harmony. For instance, an important feature of the vowel- 

 harmony of the latter group of languages consists of the adap- 

 tation of the suffix vowels to the vowel of the root, which 

 never changes. The vowel of the first syllable thus governs 

 all the rest of the vowels, no matter what their number may be. 

 In the harmony of the Yukaghir language, the root-vowel fre- 

 quently adapts itself to the vowel of the suffix (see § 92). 

 Besides, in the plural forms of personal pronouns {inef, miV ; 

 tet\ tiV ; tndel\ titel') an attempt may be noticed in the language 

 to derive new forms by means of changes of vowels within the 

 root (the method of Semitic languages) without any additions 

 from outside, a feature of which traces may be found in two 

 other so-called "isolated" Siberian languages, — that of the 

 Kott and the Ostyak from Yenisei. 



