98 GRAMMAR OP THE LANGUAGE 



GRAMMAR. 



I SHALL treat in this essay of the different parts of speech, 

 to wit : * Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Con- 

 junction, and Interjection. 



&— #f Nouns. 



Nouns are of two kinds, substantive and adjective. 



Of the Noun Substantive. 



The Tndians have no declensions, properly so called ; that is to say, the 

 nouns are not declined by inflections, as in the Latin and Greek, except 

 in two cases, the vocative and the local. In the others the place of these 

 terminations is supplied by the relative position of the noun, or by gram- 

 matical forms or combinations of the verbs and other parts of speech, as 

 wrll be shewn in the following examples. These grammatical forms or 

 combinations are peculiar to the Indian languages, and I believe are not 

 to be found in any others. They will be more fully explained under their 

 proper heads. At present I shall only shew in what manner what are 

 commonly called the cases of nouns are expressed or indicated. 



Nominative. 



This case (if it may be so called) has no particular form or inflection. 

 It is simply the name of the substantive, as in English. 



Lenni, the man 

 Ochqueu, the woman 

 Wikwam, the house 



Sipo or sipu, the river 

 Getanittowit, God 

 Gischuch, the sun. 



* Note by the Translator. — The Author does not speak of the article ; yet there is one in the 

 Delaware language, the article 7110, which is used either in a definite or indefinite sense, as 

 m'hittuck, a tree or the tree. The Minsi say michtuk. Thi^ article was discovered hy the Trans- 

 lator in the Massachusetts language, and on inquiring of Mr Heckewelder, he said that the same 

 article was also in the Delaware, but was not frequently used, because tin- word was sufficiently 

 understood without it. See his letter ti> the Translator in the notes to Eliot's Grammar, 11th Mas- 

 sachusetts' Historical Collections, Second Series, p. xv. 



