This is also one of the languages which has been announced as “neither polysynthetic nor incorporative,” and the construction of its verb as “simple to the last degree.”[327]
We know the tongue only through the Grammar and Phrase-Book of Father de la Cuesta, who acknowledges himself to be very imperfectly acquainted with it.[328] With its associated dialects, it was spoken near the site of the present city of San Francisco, California.
Looking first at the verb, its “extreme simplicity” is not so apparent as the statements about it would lead us to expect.
In the first place, the naked verbal theme undergoes a variety of changes by insertion and suffixes, like those of the Quiche and Qquichua, which modify its meaning. Thus:
_Ara_, to give. _Arsa_, to give to many, or to give much. _Arapu_, to give to oneself. _Arasi_, to order to give, etc., etc.
_Oio_, to catch. _Oiñi_, to come to catch. _Oimu_, to catch another, etc.
The author enumerates thirty-one forms thus derived from each verb, some conjugated like it, some irregularly. With regard to tenses, he gives eight preterits and four futures; and it cannot be said that they are formed simply by adding adverbs of time, as the theme itself takes a different form in several of them, _aran_, _aras_, _aragts_, etc. In the reflexive conjugation the pronoun follows the verb and is united with it: As,
where _ca_ is a suffixed form of _can_, I; _ne_ represents _nenissia_, oneself; the _g_ is apparently a connective; and the theme is _ara_. This is quite in the order of the polysynthetic theory and is also incorporative.
Such syntheses are prominent in imperative forms. Thus from the above-mentioned verb, _oio_, to catch, we have,
in which _mit_ is apparently the second person _men_, with a postposition _tsa_, _mintsa_; while _yuts_ is a verbal fragment from _yuyuts_, which the author explains to mean “to set about,” or “to get done.” This imperative, therefore, is a verbal noun in synthesis with an interjection, “get done with thy gathering.” It is a marked case of polysynthesis. A number of such are found in the Mutsun phrases given, as:
_Rugemitithsyuts cannis_, Give me arrows.
In this compound _cannis_, is for _can_ + _huas_, me + for; _yuts_ is the imperative interjection for _yuyuts_; the remainder of the word is not clear. The phrase is given elsewhere