268 



just one of them. In the Greenlandic verbal inflection , it is 

 nothing less than a riddle how the suffix for thou — me : 

 -arma (for example takiiwarma , thou seest or sawest me) has 

 got the shape that it has; it stands in remarkable contrast to 

 the corresponding suffixes for the other persons, especially on 

 account of the uvular. If it had not been for the Alaska form 

 given here, I should of course have guessed that the form had 

 been produced by "retrogressive uvularization". But that di- 

 stant old form shows us that Greenlandic -arma has at one 

 time had a more voluminous body, namely one resembling AI. 

 -агроца. If we compare the Greenlandic doublets of the same 

 formation , as for instance those for the word ermuseq — 

 erwriuseq (a dipper, a drinking-vessel) , we can easily reconstruct 

 all the phases of this assimilation: *arporia '>*arp7ia ^*arwiia 

 > arma, the present form. 



So it is only through the longer Alaska form that we are 

 enabled to understand this Greenlandic suffix. And it is the same 

 in many other cases. The western dialects have been 

 far more conservative than the eastern dialects. 



Therefore if the West Eskimo dialects should some time 

 be subjected to closer investigation so that we can get better 

 knowledge about them, I expect that we shall find many more 

 differences of dialect, and those in part fundamental dif- 

 ferences. My rough sketch of the stratifications in this family 

 of languages will by these differences be thrown into stronger 

 relief; they will add new lines to it and will perhaps even essent- 

 ially change the historical perspective. There is as yet too 

 little known about the languages at the extreme western limits, 

 both on the coast of Alaska and on the adjacent islands (apart 

 from Barnum's grammar of the language in one single district) 

 for us to be able to draw conclusions of scientific value about 

 the relations of those dialects to each other and to the 

 Eskimo family of languages as a whole. 



All in ail there is vet much work to be done in this 



