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Show 336 The subject- pronoun is prefixed to the stem of the verb; the negative particle kai is inserted before the verb or stands at the head of the sentence. The particles of the preterit tense are: oma . . . gat, or am a . . . gat; those of the future : i v i . . . lot, or a t i - i . . . let. more, to kill: non amo moregat, I have killed. non ivi morelot, I shall kill. non kai moregat, / have not killed, telSvua, to see: tele> uak, to see something ( k sign of object). tele* vtchok, to talk to somebody, ( viz. to see somebody.) Father Boscana has left an interesting sketch of the Capistrano Indians, their history, customs, manners, and mythology, in his Chinigchinioh, or " World- Maker." Robinson translated it from the Spanish, and published it as an appendix to his " Life in California," 12mo, New York, 1846. The only text of the Gaitchin language given by him is an Indian popular song of five lines, which has been republished in the elaborate treatise of Professor Buschmann, " Traces of the Aztec Language," on page 546. The Lord's Prayer was transmitted by the explorer Daflot de Mofras in 1842 with that of the Kizh. KIZH. Of this dialect we possess three vocabularies: that of Dr. Coulter, ( 1841;) of the Exploring Expedition, collected by H. Hale and published in 1846; and that of Osc. Loew, ( 1875.) All three were taken at the mission of San Gabriel; but the Lord's Prayer, taken by Mofras, II, 393- 4, at San Fernando, proves that various sub- dialects of Kizh are spoken through the whole vicinity of Los Angeles. . Neither the term Kizh nor Netela are known on the spot to designate any particular language or tribe, kizh meaning simply houses. The remnants of the once populous tribes or bands settled around San Gabriel Mission call themselves Tobikhars, ( meaning settlers, from ttfba, to sit, tobakharf, to stand in Kizh) and speak almost universally Spanish. Having adopted the name Gaitchin for the Southern coast dialect, we may just as well use Kizh, which has the same signification of " houses" as a name for the northern twin-idiom. At first sight, Kizh seems to differ considerably from Gaitchin, Takbtam, and Kan. vuya; but a careful comparison of all the vocabularies now available shows that a rea affinity exists between the four. The following terms are rendered by the same radical in all the four idioms: father, mother, ear, nose, teeth, arm and hand, heart, arrow,, house, heaven, sun, moon, star, water, mountain, bear, fish: I, thou, to drink; one. two, three, four. Kizh agrees at least with two of these dialects in the following im nortant terms: mouth, breast, sea, salt, stone, deer, wolf, fox, rattlesnake, to eat, to kill; and in many of them a close coincidence is observed between Kizh and the Northern Shoshonee dialects on Columbia River and in Montana, the Utah, Payute, Moqui, Comanche, and even the. Kiowa. Some words not found in the southern branches occur only in Kizh and the Northern Shoshonee. It might be with propriety objected to the statement that Kizh is a Shoshonee idiom, the circumstance that the Kizh grammar differs widely from that o f the Shoshonee languages; that these latter do not employ reduplication of the first syllable as a means of grammatical synthesis; that they lack the sound r, or employ it very rarely; that their possessive pronoun mine is na, ni, nu, and not a, as in Kizh, and that they do not generally place it before the parts of the human body or the degrees of oonsauguinity. To these objections we reply as follows: The a in Kizh is nothing else but the na with apheresis of the initial n, and this pronoun sounds ni in Kizh before the terms of consanguinity. The northern Shoshonees really do prefix the mine to the terms of the human limbs and to father, mother, & c. The scarcity of the r in other idioms proves nothing, since tbey employ other sounds in its stead, and Kizh lacks I almost entirely. Reduplication also occurs in Shoshonee dialects, though not generally to render the idea of plurality as in Kizh. We quote the following instances of reduplication from the Kauvuya branch: In Kauvuya: yuyuraa, cold ; sasaymol, duck ; ve* vonkon, rata. In Takhtam: votchevuetch, old. In Southern Payute: mobits,/ ooJ; inomobits,/ oofo. In Gaitchin: mag£ t, great, plural inauit, probably contracted from mamagat. It is true that the reduplicative plural is a peculiar feature of the languages spoken along the Pacific coast of North America, and it occurs in this quality in Selish, Klamath, Island of Santa Cruz, and probably in many other Californian idioms; also in Pima, Aztec, Tarahumara, and in Tepeguana. In the elements of verbal inflection, numerals, and in the degrees of consanguinity, Kizh agrees closely with Gaitchin, to which it bears the closest resemblance of all the Kauvuya dialects. But what languages have furnished to Kizh its words not traceable in the other Shoshonee dialects T |
