Page:On the Non-Aryan Languages of India.djvu/12

6 of 300 or 400 miles from the main body of the Kolarians; and yet the Kurku is hardly more than a dialect of the Santáli, showing, as will also be seen to be the case as regards several dialects in other groups, that there is, by no means of necessity, a rapid divergence of Turanian dialects, as has been generally supposed, in consequence of their isolation. The Kolarian group has both the cerebral and dental row, and also aspirated forms, which last, according to Caldwell, did not belong to early Dravidian. There is also a set of four sounds, which are perhaps peculiar to Santáli, called by Skrefsrud semi-consonants, and which, when followed by a vowel, are changed respectively into g, j, d and b. Gender of nouns is animate and inanimate, and is distinguished by difference of pronouns, by difference of suffix of a qualifying noun in the genitive relation, and by the gender being denoted by the verb. As instances of the genitive suffix, we have in Santáli in-ren hopon 'my son,' but in-ak orak 'my house.' "With this may be compared the signs of the genitive relation in Gond, as before alluded to, in the Modern Aryan languages of India, and in the Zulu of South Africa, in all of which a noun in the genitive relation has a different sign according to the gender of the noun on which it depends.

There is no distinction of sex in the pronouns, but of the animate and inanimate gender. Of the demonstrative pronouns in Santáli, seven end in i for the animate, and seven in a for the inanimate gender. The dialects generally agree in using a short form of the third personal pronoun suffixed to denote the number, dual and plural, of the noun, and short forms of all the personal pronouns are added to the verb in certain positions to express both number and person, both as regards the subject and object, if of the animate gender; the inanimate gender being indicated by the omission of these suffixes. No other group of languages, apparently, has such a logical classification of its nouns, as that shown by the genders of both the South Indian groups. The genitive in the Kolarian group of the full personal pronouns is used for the possessive pronoun, which again takes all the postpositions, the genitive relation being thus indicated by the