Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/182

 91' AK AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGE.

The affixes used in the language of the aborigines of this colony show the nature of the verb, whether causative, declarative, or active; whether personal, instrumental, self-active, or loco- niotive; and whether negative, aflirmative, privative, apparent, or actual. It is only by a strict attention to the root-meaning of the affixes, that they can be properly applied to express the modiiied uses of the principal word to which they are joined, whether that principal be a verb, a proper name of a person or place, or a common substantive.

��Illustrative Sentences,^

to show the force of the variations of the conso- nants in the suffix-forms of the verb.

��Suffixes.

1. -'\).\lJi-'ko; m., for the purpose of — the root-meaning of the verb.

Examples: — 1. Gratun tunbilliela- noa barun talokan, and he divided unto them the property.' 2. Tiigun-billia nura, 'show yourselves.' 3. Kapirro wirri ban-billin, 'I am perishing with hunger.'

Analysis: — 1. Gratun, ' and'; tun, the root of the verb ' to ap- portion, divide, separate, count'; -billiela, the past participle of billiko; noa, 'he,' the verbal-nominative form of the pro- noun; barun, 'them'; talokan, ' property, goods.'

2. Tiigun, as a verb, 'to show'; as anoun, 'a mark for a sign,' 'a chop on a tree to show the road.'.

3. Kapirri, 'hunger'; the a makes the word an instrumental case; wirri is the root of the verb wirrilliko, 'for motion to act,' as an instrument; ban, 'doing, acting'; -billin is the form of the present participle of that verb.

2. ~\i-\\lli-Jco; m., to he doing effectively ichat the verb imjjlies.

Ex.: — Minnug ballin bi? ' what object art thou effecting? what are you doing? what are you about'? Tetti ballin bag, ' I am dying.'

sets forth his theory that the vowels and consonants of the sufBx-forms of verbs and pronouns have each of them a determinate and essential meaning; a portion of this theory appear* in the headings of the twenty sections of " Illustrative Sentences" which now follow. These Illustrative Sentences I print for the sake of the examples of analysis which they contain; and yet I do not think that that analysis is in every instance correct. — Ed.
 * I liave here omitted twelve pajes of " The Key "; in them our author

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