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Show 339 CHEMEHUEVI. This Pay nte sub- dialect does not differ half as much from the Southern Payute than Spanish does from Portuguese, and many of the differences observed in Loew's vocabularies between the two seem to depend only on the individual pronunciation of the Indians from whom he obtained his information. Chemehuevi has frequently p and tch, where S. P. has b and ts. Like the Southern Payutes, the Chemehuevis do not prefix, the possessive mine to the degrees of consanguinity and the parts of the human body as t h e Western Payutes do, who abbreviate the ni into i. The terms for numerals, colors, man's limbs. and in fret the great majority of all the terms noted by Loew, radically agree iu both dialects, and from this we can infer that their grammatical structure may be of the same type also, though no sentences of the Chemehuevi are at present submitted for examination. WESTERN PAYUTES. The dialect spoken in the extensive mountain- tracts of Mono and Inyo Counties, California, and some adjacent parts of Nevada, diverges considerably from the Southern Pay ate, and seems to have retained many terms in common with the neighboring idiom of the Western Shoshonees or Snake Indians. The personal appearance of the Western Payutes, especially their features, vividly recall to our mind the Mougolian type of mankind. Their deportment does not offend our ideas of propriety, and their faces bear a friendly, often intelligent, expression. Some of the aborigines are earning wages from American settlers, but the majority lead a wretched life by feeding on pine- nuts, roots, worms, and lizards. Mr. Loew collected the main part of his linguistic material in Benton, Mono Connty. The sentences and a few terms were taken in Aurora, a little mining town of Inyo County, on the borders of California and Nevada. A few dialectic variations can be traced between the idioms of both places. Vowels: u, u, o, a, e, i. Nasalized vowels : a, e, u. Diphthongs: an ; ai, oi, ui. Consonants: k, t, p ; g, b; s, f, ( or ss,) sh; h, y, ( the German j,) v; n, m; r, r. Western Payute, therefore, lacks the oonsonantal sounds of / , th, ( which ocoars in Mohave,) kh, I; and d may be said to be wanting also, for it occurs only in 6de, bow. Syllables generally begin with consonants, but terminate as often in vowels as in consonants, v seems to alternate with b and p and ts, tch of the southern dialects often turns up as r in Western Pay nte. Of derivative endings of nouns, the most frequent is - vey as in Zufii: toyave, mountain ; ovaVe, salt; v6ve, wood. Other terminations are: - n t : nugut, goose; tun£- agut, great spirit. - ib : tnvib, sand; toshumfb, midnight. - sh : ogteh, feat her8; agish, grasshopper. Western Payute must have dropped long ago the plural ending observed in almost all the Shoshonee languages, {- urn or - im,- dm;) \>& gve, fish; vahai pagve, two fish. In a few words, however, we notice that plural forms have been retained, as in nam, man; plural, na- ana; and the ending - im, - Uim re- appears in the plural forms of verbs, as in kointi- itim, to hunt- said of many persons hunting, or of many animals hunted. The names for the colors end in - nagite, except that of yellow, which exhibits the contracted form oahanite. The interrogative pronouns and particles are as follows: hay 6- 0, whatf hino- oy, hino- oytu : how many t ban ague, whence ! wherefrom f hin6- ue, when f o- n hfi- nt, whereto f Tenses and negative sentences are formed in this manner: To drink, hivit: I shall drink, hivi nQ. I have drunk, hivivai nu. I have not drunk, garo- o nu hivi. To sleep, uvuit: / hare slept, ( already,) nu vi tusbu haplyu. I shall sleep, mi- asha havi. Many transitive and intransitive verbs end in- at ( or - it, - nt): yardhat, to speak, talk, in the Aurora subdialect: yarti- a; navagiat, to swim; kvatohat, to fall; voagit, to work ; htivi- - erut, to sing; in the Benton subdialect the majority of all verbs seems to have this termination, which in the plural form is increased by - 4m. From the lengthy trisyllabic or quadrisyllable forms of most verbs we may readily infer that they are compounds of the root, with some pronominal affixes, nouns or fragments of nouns. T H K YTJMA. STOCK. Owing to the patient labors of Dr. Loew, the Tuma group in its totality of dialects will become one of the best known of all the language- families of Western North America when the collections of words and sentences made by him will be made |
