266 E. H. MATHEWS AND M. M. EVERITT. 



There are two genders, the masculine denoting the male sex ;. 

 and the feminine, denoting the female sex ; generally expressed 

 by the use of different words. Bow'-wil, man; Bul'-lan, woman. 



The sex of animals may also be distinguished by the prefixes 

 go'-wul/male; and ngo-wal, female. Go'-wul mir'-ree-gung, he-dog. 



Nouns have eight cases : — nominative, nominative-agent, genitive, 

 dative, accusative, locative, ablative, and vocative, all except the- 

 nominative and vocative, being formed by the addition of post- 

 positions or particles, to the nominative singular. 



The nominative, if a noun, usually begins the sentence : — 



(a) Nom. Bul'-lan, woman; as, Bul'-lan mun'-na-min, woman runs. 



(b) Nominative-agent, or subject of a transitive verb. Bul'-lan-ga, 



woman; as, Bul'-lan-ga, thi-min ngul'-lee, woman eats fish. 



N.B. — Ga, interchangeable with ba and wa in certain 

 cases for the sake of euphony. 



(c) Genitive Bul'-lan-ngoo, woman's; as, Bul'lan-ngoo gow'-will- 



k/-goong, woman's yamstick. 



(d) Dative, Bul'-lan-ngoo, to or for the woman ; as, Yoong'-ee 



bul'-lan-ngoo dhung'-ung, give to woman food. For the 

 use or benefit of the woman, is expressed in the same way. 



(e) Accusative, Bul'-lan, woman. Is generally like the nomin- 



ative, but sometimes indicated by the genitive sign, as, 

 Bul'-lan -ngoo ngo6-bee-nga'-jii'-long, they are beating the 

 woman. Here there is the sense of possession, the woman 

 being the possessor of the beating. Where there is no- 

 such sense, the word is invariable. 



(f) Locative, Bul'-laa-wa'-ro, in, on, or at, the woman. Wa-ro, 



pronounced also wa-roo, and bar'-roo, accompanies adverbs 

 of place and prepositions, where no preposition would be 

 used in English; as, Dhoo-lan ngoo-nan'-bil ba-ba-roong'- 



1 Gow-ul, evidently equivalent to go-wul, meaning the male of animals, 

 is given in Collin's " Account of the English Colony in New South 

 Wales," (London, 1798), Vol. i., p. 612. 



