237 



A closer study of the dialects will probably lead to the 

 discovery of more examples of these or similar sound-changes. 

 1 think 1 have produced enough of material to show that it is 

 probable that at a certain point in the history of the Eskimo 

 language, in certain words in the East Eskimo dialects, a 

 characteristic metathesis has taken place, whereby an r (in 

 Greenlandic also w) occurring in one of the last syllables in a 

 word is drawn back tow'ard the beginning of the word. In 

 Greenlandic, this shifting has generally entailed a corresponding 

 change in the vowel of the word-stem, if not immediately, at 

 least in the course of time ; the only exceptions are those cases 

 where the r- or li^-sound has been absorbed in assimilation 

 with the neighboring consonant. In the Labrador forms, there 

 are distinct traces of the same metathesis, even if the traces 

 are not quite so well preserved here. To sum up the results, 

 we may say that although the Greenlandic and Labrador dialects 

 in their present shapes completely agree only in a certain 

 number of cases, while in the remaining cases, each one has 

 its own characteristic groups, yet these two dialects are decid- 

 edly on the same side as against the type which we find in 

 the extreme west in the corresponding words. 



I have no doubt as to which of these three types (malruk 

 — map'iik — markuk] is the oldest. It is in the west that 

 we find these words in their original forms. The 

 basis for the three types is a form that ends in, or contains 

 two consonants of which the first is some other consonant than 

 r (orw), while the second is a sound related to r (or w). After 

 the two chief branches of the original Eskimo language had 

 separated from each other, the Greenlandic and Labrador dialects 

 (to continue with these Iwoi probably went the same way with 

 respect to the metathesis of Ir [<</•], whereas they have partly 

 gone separate ways with respect to the further development of 

 the forms resulting from the metathesis. The relation between 

 them mav be tabulated in this wav: 



