1853.] On the Mongolian Affinities of the Caucasians. 69 



The plurals of the Mantchu personal pronouns are thus stated and 



commented upon. 



We. Ye. They. 



Be ") 



Mous^. | Souw ^ *"*■ 



To this statement of the pronouns it is added that Be, Sou we, 

 and Te'set, constitute the ordinary series ; that Mouse is a sample of 

 the Dualistic form ; and that it is regularly derived from Mou, I, by 

 the addition of the plural sign se. Now it is quite true that the 

 existence of a Dual or rather, of an inclusive plural* is one of the 

 characteristics of these tongues and one that prevails very generally 

 from the Pacific to Caucasus. But how it can be said that in the 

 Mantchu tongue this inclusive plural is formed regularly from the 

 singular Mou by means of the plural sign se, I cannot conceive, 

 since a regular pluralizing particle would be uniformly applied and 

 wear one shape, whereas there is here in the three persons of the 

 pronouns no vestige of such attributes in the se particle. The ordi- 

 nary "we" (be) has no trace of this or other pluralizing suffix: the 

 ordinary "ye" (sou we) has quite a different augment (we); and, 

 lastly, the 3rd person shows the se particle indeed, but with a foreign 

 element or suffixed t (set). Now surely a grammatical rule must 

 have some identity of character ; what it includes must be similar 

 in form and application. But that in the Mantchu pronouns the 

 plurals cannot be said to be regularly formed by the addition of se 

 is self-apparent ; and if we turn to any collated list of the pronouns 

 of the Altaic tongues generally we shall immediately perceive the 

 same anomalies prevailing throughout this group of languages, and 

 affecting both the form and the application of all the particles ; the 

 ang suffix, for instance, being at once a genitive and a dative sign in 



and kwer, hand, from x €l Pt an( * Klaproth's of Waran rain from U^ and Mare 

 from fy*. I shall give numerous Tartar equivalents for all three and thus prove 

 their roots to be respectively Ka, Wa and Ma, the ra, re and ran being serviles, or 

 rather phases of one servile. 



* This remarkable and arbitrary feature of a dual and two plurals I have already 

 detected in the Kuswar, Hayu and Kiranti tongues of the Himalaya and in the Ho, 

 Sontal and Uraon tongues of Tamulian India, I need hardly add that the same 

 peculiarity belongs to the Tagalan and Alforian languages, as well as the Altaic. 



