116 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAXADIAN IXSTITL'TK. 



pure inflections, or phonetic changes, suggested by tlie language- 

 forming faculty, to express distinctions of meaning. As Professor 

 Sayce has well suggested in his " Principles of Comparative Phil- 

 ology," the original Ai'abic case-endings, which are the three primarv 

 vowels, a, i and o, either pure or nasalized — and which, as Oriental- 

 ists suppose, formerly prevailed throughout the Semitic languages — 

 could hardly have originated in any other way. And certainly the 

 variations by internal vocalic changes, so characteristic of the Semitic 

 languages, and so common in the Aryan tongues, could not have- 

 sprung from any agglutinations. 



These internal variations are frequent in the Sahaptin, and are 

 particularly notable in the conjugation of the verb. The Sahaptin 

 verb far sur])asses both the Aryan and the Semitic in the variety of 

 its forms and the precision and nicety of its distinctions.. It has six 

 moods — indicative, usitative, suppositive, subjunctive, imperative, and 

 infinitive. There are nine tenses — present, perfect, recent past, 

 i-emote i)ast, aorist or past indefinite, i^resent future, indefinite 

 future, recent past future, i-emote past future. Each verb has two 

 verbal adjectives or participles, three verbal nouns, and an adverbial 

 derivative. Further, each verb has many forms, analogous to the 

 HeVjrew conjugations. Thus hakisa, to see, has a reciprocal form, 

 pihakisa, to see each other ; a reflective form, inaksa, I see myself ; 

 a causative form, shapaksa, to cause to see, to show ; a successi\e 

 form, wiaksa, to see one thing after another ; and a transitory form,. 

 tajcaksa, to see suddenly, or for a short time. But it is impossible, 

 in such a mere outline, to give anything like an adequate idea of the- 

 richness of the verb in this remarkable speech. The point, however, 

 to which attention is pai'ticularly to be directed, is that the variations 

 are evidently inflections, pure and simple. This is shown by the fact 

 that many of them are produced by changes in the primary elements,, 

 both vowels and consonants : thus from hakisa, I see, we have (among 

 a vast variety of similar changes) aksaka, (recent past) I have jui^t 

 seen him, aksana, (remote past) I did see him, ahahaa, (aorist) I saw 

 him, aktatasha^ (present future) I am abovit to see him, aknu, (future) 

 I shall see him, ahnah, (usitative) I am wont to see him, akinah, (hup- 

 positive) if I see him, ahnim, (imperative) see him ! hahnash, (infini- 

 tive) to see. 



