Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

resembling cattus in this respect) can be applied to other animals. That Phaedrus uses it as 'wolf' is natural, considering the close relation of the species.12 It is more curious to note the Spanish folk use of perra chica and perra gorda for five and ten céntimo coppers, referring to the lions that adorn them. As in the case of catellus, there exist a number of derivatives of canis in Romance, e.g. French chenet, OF chenel (Godefroy), chienetel (ibid.), Fr. dialect chienneton, Prov. canilho, chenilho, (Mistral), Sp. canijo.13 A glance at Fr. chenille shows that, like the derivatives of cattus, possibly even to a more diverse extent, the formations on canis show a great variety of significance: Roman. Etym. Wbch. mentions kanaya (in Tessin canton, Switzerland), rendered 'Kinder' and Tyrolese kanai 'Knabe.' Thus the two major groups, the one based on canis and the other on cattus, have, since early times, followed, from the semantic point of view, a similar and at times common road. Already the grammarian Virgilius, in discussing gender, speaks as follows: '. . quidam simpliciter dixerunt quod masculinim hoc esse debuit quod secundum habitudinem corporis ostenderetur et ita femininum ut vir et mulier, taurus et vacca, aries et ouis, c a ni s et cata et cetera animalia." Hence an expression like Mistral's La chino dou segnour a cadela 'the seigneur's dog has puppies' need not seem extraordinary. It is, however, more curious to find under the heading Petit Chat, in the Atlas Linguistique, Map 1498, the forms kanālos (fem.), kanile (id.), chenil, chnil, all obviously from canis. That such interchange of meanings should have occurred is the almost inevitable consequence of semantic kinship aided by the lack of fixity within each group.

One more remark, in this connection, apropos of Mistral's translation of fa de-catetos 'en baissant la tête, en rampant avec un air d'humilité.' Was he aware that this is more the manner of a dog than of a cat? Certain it is that cat-de-mar is given as 'chien de mer' without comment.' In the last instance, the confusion may be of long standing, because caniculus and catulus are both rendered 'piscis' by the Latin glossators.15

12 Riddle-Scheller's Lexicon totius Latinitatis.

13 García de Diego §96. Many verbs are formed on this substantive, e.g. encanijarse, encaniau.

14 Ibid. §111: 'Ignoro en qué se apoyaría el gramático Virgilio, Epist., I, 110, para identificar catta con canis feminina.' Is there not more than one child who thinks of cat as the feminine of dog and even cow as the feminine of horse? Incidentally attention is called to the loose manner in which the passage from Virgilius was quoted.

15 Corpus Gloss. Lat. 3.318. 17; 437. 13 and, for catulus, 3.431. 10.

THE INSTRUMENTAL AND THE COMITATIVE IN THE ALEUT LANGUAGE

WALDEMAR JOCHELSON

There are in Aleut1 three endings to indicate the number of nouns: x' for the singular, x for the dual, and n (in the Atka dialect, s) for the plural.

A'dax' father, a'dax two fathers, a'dan (Atka a'das) fathers.

The singular has two cases, the absolute and the relative (or the nominative and the genitive). The absolute may serve in the sentence as subject or object (direct). All other relations between nouns and other words (with the exception of the instrumental and the comitative forms, for which see further) are expressed by the relative case and by postpositional pronouns added to the end of the noun. The dual and plural have only one case, the absolute, as the duality or plurality of the compound is expressed not in the noun but in the postpositional pronouns. The suffix of the relative case is m instead of the x' of the absolute case.

Absolute case: a'dax' father.

Relative case: a'dam of the father.

a'dam-i'lan 'of the father to him,' i.e. to the father.

a'dam-ila'n 'of the father from him,' i.e. from the father.

a'dam-ili'kin to two fathers.

a'dam-ili'ñin to the fathers.

cam-ku'gan 'of the hand on it,' i.e. on the hand.

cam-kuga'n 'of the hand from it,' i.e. from the hand.

Instrumental. The element sa, expressing the instrumental, is suffixed

1 The Aleut is a dialect of the Eskimo. The author studied the Aleut language (in three dialects) while spending about two years (1909-10) in the Aleutian Islands on behalf of the Russian Geographic Society. Archaeological Investigations in the Aleutian Islands were published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1925. The Aleut folklore (texts and translation), grammar, and vocabulary, are in preparation for the Publications of Columbia University, New York, under the editorship of Prof. Franz Boas. The material on the somatology, ethnology, and sociology of the Aleut is also in preparation. In this article g is used instead of g with a dot beneath to represent an uvular [G].

to the verbal stem of the sentence and not to the noun. We shall take for example the verbal stem a'nu to throw.

nux' anu'kux' a stone he throws.

nux' anusa'kux' a stone he flings with.

When the direct object is named, the pronoun ñan, i'kin, or ñin to him, to them both, or to them, is added to the instrument.

sax' nux'-ñan anūsa'kux' the bird a stone to it he flings with.

Here is another example:

suku'qiñ I take.

su-sa-ku'qiñ I take with it.

cañ susaku'qiñ my hand I take with it.

When the direct object is named and to the instrument a personal pronoun is added, the latter agrees in number with the direct object. For instance:

1. qax' cañ-ñan susaku'qiñ a fish I take with my hand.

2. qax cañ-i'kin sūsaku'qiñ two fishes I take with my hand.

3. qan cañ-ñin sūsaku'qiñ fishes I take with my hand.

Literally these sentences have to be translated as follows:

1. The fish my hand it (i.e. the fish) with it (i.e. with the hand) I take. 2. Two fishes my hand them both with it I take.

3. Fishes my hand them with it I take.

Thus the instrumental element sa suffixed to the verbal stem (su) refers to the instrument cañ my hand, while the pronoun (ñan, i'kin, or ñin) refers to the direct object (qax', qax, qan). We wish to add that the dative of the personal pronouns (ñan, i'kin, ñin) takes the place in the above sentences of the accusative, as in other cases with verbs. In nouns the absolute case appears as the nominative-accusative, while in personal pronouns the absolute case is wanting. For the third person pronouns are used, which are combined with an adverbial element showing the distance of the third person from the speaking person. For instance, a'man he who is far from the speaking person, but not out of sight; i'ñan he the near one; a'kan he the upper one; u'knan he the lower one; u'kan he the inside one, etc.

Nouns and verbs are formed from the same stem. When the stem becomes a noun, its instrumental element will be si (instead of sa in verbs). For instance, tu'ga expresses the notion beat: tuga'-kux' he beats; tuga-sa'kux' he beats with it; tu'ga-x' the beating; tuga'-si-x' the instrument for beating (stick, club). asu'ga is the stem dig: asu'ga-x' the digging; asuga'-si-x' a spade, i.e. 'the instrument for digging.'

The comitative. The comitative is expressed by means of a'six, a

participle form of the stem a- to be: a'six being with (somebody or something).

a'dañ a'six hwagana'qiñ 'my father being with (me) I came to this place,' i.e. I came to this place with my father.

But the same locution may be expressed by the instrumental element sa suffixed to the stem. hwagana'qiñ I came to this place; hwa'ga is the stem, na element of past tense, qiñ personal ending. a'dañ hwagāsa-na'-qiñ my father I came with, or I brought my father. Thus we see that the instrumental element sa may transform an intransitive verb into a transitive.

THE -TT- IN LATIN QUATTUOR

ROLAND G. KENT

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Numerals share with pronouns the honor of being the best criteria of linguistic relationship; and yet among the names of the digits we find more exceptions to the principle of regular phonetic development, probably, than anywhere else in an equal group of unquestioned cognates. The exceptions arise, in the main, from the fact that the words are in use so closely associated with one another that they affect one another's forms.1

One such puzzling exception is the -tt- in Latin quattuor. The conventional theory is that it is a doubling, or more strictly a lengthening, of the consonant at the junction between two syllables, as in the occasional Iusstus, solluit, etc. of inscriptions, and in the Italian febbre, acqua from Latin febris, aqua.2 But in quattuor the doubling is admittedly much earlier than that in the Italian words, and as compared with the Latin examples, it is regular and not sporadic. For the length of the initial syllable of quattuor is assured in the time of Plautus, by its use in Pseudolus 1303; and the spelling quattuor, with two t's, is found in CIL 12.587.ii.18, 21, an inscription of 81 B.C.3

The only circumstance in which, in Latin, a single consonant became doubled, is that of its standing after a long vowel of the accented syllable, at the same time that it, the consonant, belongs to the following syllable, and is immediately followed by the vowel of that syllable. Thus older Iupiter regularly became Iuppiter, and older litera became littera. The inference is unescapable, that quattuor represents an older *quatuor, in which the -u- had already become vocalic. Can a long vowel in the initial syllable of this word be explained on any reasonable basis, in the face of the short vowed attested by all other languages?

1 I give a minimum of references, citing here collectively A. Walde, Lat. etym. Wtb., s. vv.; E. Boisacq, Dict. étym. de la langue grecque, s. vv.; K. Brugmann, Gdr. d. vergl. Gram. d. indog. Spr. 22.2.1-82 (1911); F. Sommer, Hbd. d. lat. Lautu. Formenlehre2 (1914); F. Stolz, Lat. Gram.5 291–5 (1926), revised by M. Lehmann, in I. v. Müller's Hdb. d. Altertumsw. II. 2.

2 Leumann-Stolz, op. cit. §152.

Sommer, op. cit. 203.

« ZurückWeiter »