o sleep" forms the continuative _ingetym-ad_ "to be
sleeping" and the past _ingetym-ash_.

[Footnote 42: See page 49.]

[Transcriber's note: Footnote 42 refers to the paragraph beginning on
line 1534.]

[Footnote 43: Spoken in the south-central part of California.]

Consonantal change as a functional process is probably far less common
than vocalic modifications, but it is not exactly rare. There is an
interesting group of cases in English, certain nouns and corresponding
verbs differing solely in that the final consonant is voiceless or
voiced. Examples are _wreath_ (with _th_ as in _think_), but _to
wreathe_ (with _th_ as in _then_); _house_, but _to house_ (with _s_
pronounced like _z_). That we have a distinct feeling for the
interchange as a means of distinguishing the noun from the verb is
indicated by the extension of the principle by many Americans to such a
noun as _rise_ (e.g., _the rise of democracy_)--pronounced like
_rice_--in contrast to the verb _to rise_ (_s_ like _z_).

In the Celtic languages the initial consonants undergo several types of
change according to the grammatical relation that subsists between the
word itself and the preceding word. Thus, in modern Irish, a word like
_bo_ "ox" may under the appropriate circumstances, take the forms _bho_
(pronounce _wo_) or _mo_ (e.g., _an bo_ "the ox," as a subject, but _tir
na mo_ "land of the oxen," as a possessive plural). In the verb the
principle has as one of its most striking consequences the "aspiration"
of initial consonants in the past tense. If a verb begins with _t_, say,
it changes the _t_ to _th_ (now pronounced _h_) in forms of the past; if
it begins with _g_, the consonant changes, in analogous forms, to _gh_
(pronounced like a voiced spirant[44] _g_ or like _y_, according to the
nature of the following vowel). In modern Irish the principle of
consonantal change, which began in the oldest period of the language as
a secondary consequence of certain phonetic conditions, has become one
of the primary grammatical processes of the language.

[Footnote 44: See page 50.]

[Transcriber's note: Footnote 44 refers to the paragraph beginning on
line 1534.]

Perhaps as remarkable as these Irish phenomena are the consonantal
interchanges of Ful, an African language of the Soudan. Here we find
that all nouns belonging to the personal class form the plural by
changing their initial _g_, _j_, _d_, _b_, _k_, _ch_, and _p_ to _y_ (or
_w_), _y_, _r