tions; verbs: verbal stems, classification of verbs, tenses, the imperative mood, the participal mood, other moods); and general observations on suffixes, reduplication, and affiliated languages and peoples. Of the three appendices, one is devoted to a full bibliography of manuscript and printed sources. The body of the work is a transcription of Bibolotti’s Spanish text (Spanish-Moseteno vocabulary and supplementary papers).
A few of the more interesting points may be noted here. Sex gender is indicated in nouns and adjectives by distinctive suffixes (e.g., izanqui-t “baby boy:” izanqui-s “baby girl;” moči-t “new” m.: moči-s “new” f.). There is a genitive suffix in -s or -si, also a number of local case suffixes. The curiously widespread American second person singular in m- meets us here once more (mi “thou”). Pronouns are not welded with the verb stem, but occur independently (e.g., ye queti “I plant”). A considerable number of verbal suffixes have been isolated by Dr. Schuller, but more intensive study of Moseteno, at first hand, if possible, is needed to make clear their functions. Phonetically, Moseteno would seem to be “far from agreeable to the ear;” it has many “clusters of totally heterogeneous consonants.” In this respect it differs from Tacana, Cavineño and other languages of the Bolivian highlands, approaching the “Chaco-Guaycurú linguistic family, although it does not have the slightest affinity with the latter.” Nevertheless, Dr. Schuller finds that “the morphological and syntactical structure convey the impression that the Moseteno is related to the Tacaan group, and particularly to the Cavineño.”
Dr. Schuller leaves no doubt of the thoroughness of his task, and students of American linguistics owe him a very real debt of gratitude. Perhaps one may be pardoned, however, for expressing the wish that penetrating first-hand phonetic and morphological studies of a number of South American languages, of a standard corresponding to some already accessible for certain North American languages, be vouchsafed to us in the course of time. These interminable vocabularies, grammatical notes, and classificatory speculations are, let us hope, but the harbingers of more substantial meals.
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA,
OTTAWA, ONT.
Geers, G. J. The Adverbial and Prepositoinal Prefixes in Blackfoot. L. van Nifterik, Leiden: 1917.
This excellent doctor’s dissertation consists of two parts: a critical discussion of the nature of the elements that enter into the Algonkin verb, and a list of nearly 150 Blackfoot verbal prefixes with illustrations drawn from text material.
The character of the highly complex verb of Algonkin has been examined by Jones, Michelson, Uhlenbeck, and others, and is too intricate for detailed review here; except that this part of speech is “a compound of various elements (verbal, adverbial, nominal, etc.) characterized as a verbal form by means of a verbal ending.” American students have sought, admittedly with qualified success, to find the rules by which verb building is controlled or limited in these languages. Dr Geers’ position seems to be that there are no limiting rules, and that, except for crystallization of idiom, elements of any character can enter the complex. It is the verbal ending, and not any relation of the constituents, that makes the verb. This interesting conception the author considers documented by the second part of his work; but as the material in his list of prefixes there is not synthesized, his new evidence, while perhaps sufficient, does not substantiate his proposition as directly as might be. The somewhat aggressively controversial tone is to be regretted, as weakening rather than strengthening the keen analysis displayed in the paper.
