to alternate with sh), which may be derived from the Yahgan root ha:sha 'voice, language, uttered words, speech, cry', or vra 'to cry' — e.g. gvlasha 'to rattle'. In the Bridges dictionary of the language one may note several otherwise identical terms differing only in whether they are spelled with an s or a ch — e.g. asela/achela 'skin'. It is not known whether this was dialectal, dialect mixture, ideolectal, gender-based usage or a real grammatical variation such as might occur with augmentative/diminutive sound symbolic shifting. Grammar Syntax Yahgan exhibits extensive case marking on nouns and equally extensive voice marking on verbs. Because of this, word order is relatively less important in determining subject and object relations. Most of the clauses in the three published biblical texts, the dictionary, and the various grammars show either verb medial or verb final orders. Certain clause types are verb initial, but are the distinct minority. Further analysis of the biblical texts is showing that the Yahga dialect allowed for semantic reordering of constituents. For instance, if SVO is considered the default order for subject and object flanking the verb, then when O is left-shifted (SOV) there is often a sense that the object nominal has more say in his/her patient-hood than if kept to the right of the verb. Similarly, when the subject is right-shifted (VSO) its agent-hood appears often less than what one would expect. It will remain to be seen how pervasive this principle is in the language, and how intricately it interacts with Tense-Aspect-Mood and Polarity marking, topicalization, focus, etc. The adverb kaia 'fast, quick(ly)' can be used lexically to modify predications, but in the three biblical texts it is also apparently used to mark the second component clause in 'if-then' types of constructions. There is no mention made of this in surviving grammars, nor in the dictionary glosses of kaia. The progressive verb suffix -gaiata may be related. Grammaticalization Grammaticalization is a historical linguistic process whereby regular lexical items shift function (and sometimes form) and become part of the grammar structure. An example of this in Yahgan would be the change of posture verbs into aspectual markers. Yahgan has a system of verbs which denote the posture of an entity: 'stand' mvni, 'sit' mu:tu:, 'lie' (w)i:a and others (for instance a:gulu: 'fly/jump', kvna 'float' etc.). In normal lexical usage one could say hai ha-mu:t-ude: 'I sat'. (hai full pronoun