and that, indeed, all verbs have suffixed tense
elements. Similarly, we normally expect to find the pronominal elements,
so far as they are included in the verb at all, either consistently
prefixed or suffixed. But these rules are far from absolute. We have
already seen that Hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain
cases, suffixes them in others. In Chimariko, an Indian language of
California, the position of the pronominal affixes depends on the verb;
they are prefixed for certain verbs, suffixed for others.

It will not be necessary to give many further examples of prefixing and
suffixing. One of each category will suffice to illustrate their
formative possibilities. The idea expressed in English by the sentence
_I came to give it to her_ is rendered in Chinook[32] by
_i-n-i-a-l-u-d-am_. This word--and it is a thoroughly unified word with
a clear-cut accent on the first _a_--consists of a radical element,
_-d-_ "to give," six functionally distinct, if phonetically frail,
prefixed elements, and a suffix. Of the prefixes, _i-_ indicates
recently past time; _n-_, the pronominal subject "I"; _-i-_, the
pronominal object "it";[33] _-a-_, the second pronominal object "her";
_-l-_, a prepositional element indicating that the preceding pronominal
prefix is to be understood as an indirect object (_-her-to-_, i.e., "to
her"); and _-u-_, an element that it is not easy to define
satisfactorily but which, on the whole, indicates movement away from the
speaker. The suffixed _-am_ modifies the verbal content in a local
sense; it adds to the notion conveyed by the radical element that of
"arriving" or "going (or coming) for that particular purpose." It is
obvious that in Chinook, as in Hupa, the greater part of the grammatical
machinery resides in the prefixes rather than in the suffixes.

[Footnote 32: Wishram dialect.]

[Footnote 33: Really "him," but Chinook, like Latin or French, possesses
grammatical gender. An object may be referred to as "he," "she," or
"it," according to the characteristic form of its noun.]

A reverse case, one in which the grammatically significant elements
cluster, as in Latin, at the end of the word is yielded by Fox, one of
the better known Algonkin languages of the Mississippi Valley. We may
take the form _eh-kiwi-n-a-m-oht-ati-wa-ch(i)_ "then they together kept
(him) in flight from them." The radical element here is _kiwi-_, a verb
stem indicating the general notion of "indefinite movement