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��INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS

��VOL. I

��original) ; cf. Salinant ko- NOT with Yana l;'u- and Chimariko xu- (from *&'-). Further com- parative research ma}' lead us to modify this view. Meanwhile it seems fairly clear that the great majority of instances of Salinan aspirated surds are merely due to positional causes.

Mason's examples of " metathesis " (p. 15) are not convincing. They seem best explained as due to vocalic syncope, e. g. lice YEAR : elci'- taneL YEARS in all probability presupposes an originally trisyllabic stem with initial vowel did-, dice-. The recognition of this type of stem, which may almost be considered the original norm for the Hokan languages (e. g. ral, have helped to clear up more than one stubborn feature ot Salinan phonetics or mor- phology. In particular, I am inclined to suspect that many examples analyzed by Mason as con- sisting of prefixed consonant plus vowel follow- ed by stem with initial consonant would have been more accurately interpreted as consonan- tal prefix followed by stem with initial vowel. Salinan here offers precisely the same difficulties and perplexities that Dixon met with in Chi- mariko.
 * ipali TONGUE, *axu'ctti BLOOD) would, in gene-

Under reduplication (p. 14) Mason omits to mention several interesting examples of final reduplication in Salinan, e. g. t-ikclele ROUND, k-itspilil PAINTED, t'pelel STRIPED, exoxo BRAIN. This would not be so important if not for the presence of analogous forms in other Hokan- Coahuiltecan languages, e.g. Chimariko le'trelrr SPOTTED, -poxolxol TO PAINT; Washo tamo" mo WOMAN, tewi'ivi YOUTH ; Pomo pololo ROUND, matoto THUNDER ; Tonkawa pilil ROUND. There are also indications of the former existence in Salinan of a method of forming the plural by final reduplication, e. g. icxexe FEET (this is doubtful because -ex- seems often in Salinan to act as a single consonant related to -r-), t-icxeplip FEET (apparently old plural * -icxepip later re-pluralized by infixed -/-). This is very

��suggestive, as final reduplication to express plurality of the noun is much in evidence in Esselen and Washo.

There seems some evidence for a diminutive suffix -la-, though this is not explicitly recog- nized by Mason, e. g. cxapa-la-t PEBBLE (cf. cxap STONE) ; t'o'-l HEAP (cf. t'oi MOUNTAIN) ; lua-ne-lo SLAVE (cf. hta MAN) ; k-'eke'-l-e TO HAVE A FATHER (cf. ek FATHER); ito-l BROTHER, plur. ito'-la-nel ; mace-l GREAT-GRANDCHILD. The establishment of a diminutive suffix -la- would receive its due significance by referring to the common Chimariko diminutive -/-(/), -la-; this element is also frequently found in Chimariko terms of relationship.

One of the most interesting and irregular features of Salinan is the formation of the plu- ral of nouns and of the plural and iterative of verbs. No less than a dozen distinct types and a large number of irregular formations arc discussed and illustrated by Mason, the great majority of them involving a suffixed or infixed -/-, --, or -/-. Significantly analogous plurals, often of great irregularity though of less fre- quency, are found in Yana ; e. g. such Salinan plurals as t-eleyithiai ARROWS (sing. (-eteyini'~) and awtciii SEVERAL REMAIN (sing, anem) offer more than a cursory parallel to such Yana forms as mut'djaut'i-vri CHIEFS (sing, mifiljan- /vr), k'nru','i SHAMANS (-r- <; -d-; sing. Ku'wi), sa'dimsi- SEVERAL SLEEP (sing, samsi-, sums-'). The Salinan type with infixed -/;-, -x- (e. g. meben- HANDS, sing, men-; kaxan SEVERAL SLEEP, sing, kaii) may be analogous to such Yana forms as dja'li- SEVERAL LAUGH (from
 * djabali- ?), sing. djal-.

The most striking feature of Salinan noun morphology is the prefixing of an element /- or /-. This prefix occurs both in primary nouns and in nominal derivatives of verb stems. When the noun is preceded by possessive pro- nominal prefixes, the /- sometimes appears before the pronominal element, at other times

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