362 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. ^CHAP. 



lexical features ; they differ from them in their very morphology, 

 as much, for instance, as in the zoological world class differs from 

 class, order from order. They have all of them developed on the 

 same polysynthetic lines, from which if a few here and there now 

 appear to depart, it is only because in the course of their further 

 evolution they have, so to say, broken away from that prototype 1 . 

 Take the rudest or the most highly cultivated anywhere from 

 Alaska to Fuegia Eskimo, Iroquois, Algonquin, Aztec, Tarascan, 

 Ipurina, Peruvian, Yahgan and you will find each and all giving 

 abundant evidence of this universal polysynthetic character,, not 

 one true instance of which can be found anywhere in the eastern 

 hemisphere. There is incorporation with the verb, as in Basque, 

 many of the Caucasus tongues, and the Ural-Altaic group ; but it 

 is everywhere limited to pronominal and purely relational elements. 

 But in the American order of speech there is no such limita- 

 tion, and not merely the pronouns, which are restricted in number, 

 but the nouns with their attributes, which are practically number- 

 less, all enter necessarily into the verbal paradigm. Thus in 

 Tarascan (Mexico): hopocuni=\Q wash the hands; hopodini = \a 

 wash the ears, from hoponi^to wash, which cannot be used 

 alone 2 . So in Ipurina (Amazonia): nicucacat<;aurumatinii = \ draw 

 the cord tight round your waist, from m\ I ; cucaca, to draw tight ; 

 tea, cord ; turuma, waist ; tint, characteristic verbal affix ; 2, thy, 

 referring to waist 3 . 



1 Such disintegration is clearly seen in the Carib still surviving in Dominica, 

 of which Mr J. Numa Rat has contributed a somewhat full account to the 

 Jour. Anthrop. fnst. for Nov. 1897, p. 293 sq. Here the broken form arame- 

 taknahdtina bitka appears to represent the polysynthetic arametakuanientibu- 

 buka (root arameta, to hide), as in Pere Breton's Granimaire Caraibe, p. 45, 

 where we have also the form Arametakualubatibubasubutuiruni = know that he 

 will conceal thee (p. 48). It may at the same time be allowed that great inroads 

 have been made on the principle of polysynthesis even in the continental 

 (South American) Carib, as well as in the Colombian Chibcha, the Mexican 

 Otomi and Pima, and no doubt in some other linguistic groups. But that the 

 system must have formerly been continuous over the whole of America seems 

 proved by the persistence of extremely polysynthetic tongues in such widely 

 separated regions as Greenland (Eskimo), Mexico (Aztec), Peru (Quechuan), 

 and Chili (Araucanian). 



2 R. de la Grasserie and N. Leon, Langue Tarasqne, Paris, 1896. 



3 Rev. J. E. R. Polak, Ipurina Grammar, &c., London, 1894. 



