252 



the other inflectional forms that are formed on tiie same stem 

 as the pUiral form). In other words, the case appHes not 

 only to those words where there has been a possibility for 

 uvularization, but to all those nouns and all those verbal 

 derivatives in the East Eskimo languages where the declension or 

 derivation of the word is accompanied by a change of stress. 



From all those words, then, in the present language that 

 have even stress on all their syllables because the syllables 

 are similarly constructed, 1 draw my conclusions for that 

 period of the language when the forms treated here were as 

 yet unassimilated; they must at that time have consisted of 

 similar series of syllables constructed alike with a certain 

 stress on each syllable but with the same stress on them all. 

 (I think I may be permitted to assume that the accentuation 

 of the language was the same then as it is now). But then 

 there came a time in the history of the language when the 

 even stress — for unknown reasons — became undulating as 

 it were, and has divided itself between the first and last syl- 

 lables of the word. It was at this stage of development that 

 Petitot wrote down, for instance, the word mallerok, cf. Al. 

 mälrük, Gr. marXuk) which he also gives with an accent on 

 the first syllable and spelled : mdlœpok ; cf. his atépeït, the 

 plural form of ate^n (a name), which in Greenlandic has the 

 shape: at^eq, \)inr. ho- qHt. When the middle syllable loses 

 its stress, its vowel is dropped in the course of time, 

 and the result is a consonant-collision. In the western 

 dialects, the course of development is in many words still at 

 this stage, while in the dialects at Davis Strait , a diflerent 

 distribution of the sound groups of these words has taken place, 

 a distribution which has led to the assimilated and geminated 

 consonants of the present language and moreover in a number 

 of words to the uvularization of the base-syllable itself. 



In conclusion I shall venture to give some illustrations of 

 how I suppose the development of the present Greenlandic 



