by Dixon but are scattered about in his texts. The verb -uwam-, -owam to go (-wam- appears also as -wum-, -waum-) regularly appears with “connecting vowel” -u-, -o-, e.g.:
- y-owa′m-xa-nan I’ll go (p. 349, l. 11)
- y-uwaum-xa′-nan I shall go (349.5)
- y-uwau′m-ia I go (349.2)
- m-owa′m-xa-nan you shall go (349.14)
- h-owa′m-da he went (349.1)
- n-u·′wam go! (349.8; n- is second perosn singular imperative)
- n-u·wa′um go back! (351.1)
- nu·-g-u·wa′m-na “don’t go!” (350.18)
With these forms contrast the following first person plurals:
- a·′-wam let’s go (351.9; 343.4)
- a·-wa′m go (359.5)
- a-wa′m let’s go (351.18)
- a-wu′m let’s go (341.6)
- a-wa′m-an we’ll go (351.16)
- na·′tcidut a·′-wam we go (349.9)
- xoko-lε·′-tce a-wa′m-xa-nan two-of-us will-go 350.1; 351.3)
- xotai′-re-tce a-wa′m-xa-nan (we)-three will-go (350.15)
Obviously a- is here a pronominal element, displacing, as do ya- and tca-, the initial vowel of the stem. The verb -uwam- probably contains a suffixed, perhaps local, -m-, as shown by other derivatives of -uwa, e.g.:
- n-u·a-kta go (359.6)
- m-u·′a-dok-ni you come back (360.2)
In such verbs also the first person plural is characterized by an a- displacing the u- of the stem, e.g.:
- a-wa-kda-xa′n let’s go around (341.10; 11)
Finally, the negative of the first person plural, ordinarily ya-x-, tca-x-, is for the verb -uwa-(m-) apparently a-x-, e.g.:
- a-x-am-gu-tcai′-da-nan (we) don’t want to go (350.14)
On the basis of Cimariko alone one might surmise that the original form for the first person plural pronominal prefix (perhaps only for the “subjective” series) was a- and that the ya- (and perhaps also tca-) forms arose under the influence of the singular. An original Hokan paradigm for the first person pronominal prefixes:
| Sing. i- | Plur. a- |
is, indeed, preserved in Salinan[1]. The contrast of sing. i- (which generally appears in Salinan as e-; for Salinan e < i c.f. Antoniaño epa·l tongue, Migueleño ipaʟ < Hokan *ipali, Chimariko ipen, Achomawi ip‘li): plur. a- appears in the independent personal pronoun (Antoniaño he·’k‘ I, ha·’k‘ we; Migueleño k‘e’ I, k‘a’ we); in the prefixed subjective elements (e- I, a- we); and in the locative pronominal series (-k’e to me, -k’a to us). The possessive pronominal prefixes are all but analogous. The first person singular is characterized by the absence of a prefix except, in the case of stems with initial vowel, for the prefixed article-like element ṭ-, which is not properly a possessive pronominal element; the corresponding plural has ṭ-a-, the article-like ṭ- plus the properly pronominal -a-, or (before vowels) ṭ-a-ṭ-, in which ṭ- seems to be used pleonastically. The only pronominal series in Salinan not characterized by a distinctive a- in the first person plural is the objective, suffixed to the verb (-ak me; -t’ak us); here the plural is derived from the singular by means of the common Salinan
- ↑ See J. A. Mason, The Language of the Salinan Indians (University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 14, pp. 1-154, 1918).
