On the non-Aryan languages of India

26
ox THE XON-ARTAX LAXGUAGES OF INDIA.
differs not onlj'' from the non-Aryan languages before mentioned,
but also from the Aryan and from the Chinese. Not
only animate but inanimate and abstract nouns are dis-
tinguished as masculine or feminine, and both the adjective
expresses agreement with its substantive and the verb with
its subject in this respect. In the plural, gender is not dis-
tinguished. The personal pronouns in the Khasi dialect are :
nga 'I,' ngi 'we'; me {m.), pha (f.) 'thou,' j';/ii 'you' ; w (m.)
' he,' ka (f.) ' she,' ki ' they.' The third personal pronoun
plays an important part in denoting when prefixed both the
gender of the substantive and the agreement of the adjective
and verb therewith. It will be remembered that, in the two
Southern Indian groups, the gender of the verb was signified
by suffixed pronominals.
In animate objects the distinction of sex is made by the
prefixed pronoun, as n-briio ' a man,' ka-hriw 'a woman';
n-hdn ' a drake,' ka-hdn ' a duck.' Of inanimate objects
the great majority no doubt are feminine ; still several
of the great objects of nature are masculine, as the names
for 'tree,' 'mountain,' 'rock,' 'star,' and also ti-hynai
' the moon '
is masculine, while ka-sngi ' the sun ' is
feminine ; also many words for smaller objects, such as for
rice, sulphur, chain, bread, fruit, etc., are masculine. Abstract
nouns, however, are all feminine. The following is an
example of the way in which the agreement of the verb and
the adjective with the substantive is expressed : u-kynna
n-hahha u-la-tcan ' the good boy came.' La is the prefix
denoting the past tense, and babha is the adjective ' good.'
Most adjectives are formed from some other part of speech
by the prefix ba, as in the above instance; babha 'good,' from
the adverb bha 'well'; or again, as baJiok 'just,' from hok
'justice.' The plural prefix ki is common to both genders,
as ki-sim ki-her ' birds fly.' The usual order of words in a
sentence is subject, verb, object ; as ti-brho ti-jmnih ia ka-ing
' the man shows the house,' where ia is the preposition denot-
ing the accusative relation. Another characteristic of the
Khasi is that vowels are sometimes dropped to avoid a hiatus;
as nga'n shvn ' I will take,' for nga yn shim; nga''m shim ' I do