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��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.
- ipali TONGUE, *axu'ctti BLOOD) would, in gene-
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.
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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