1857.] An Ethnological Inquiry. 557 



and hence, as a matter of course, it would follow, that the Abo- 

 rigines too, speaking these languages, were also of Oriental origin, 

 •which would seem to be an absurd conclusion, reasoning by 

 analogy. 



But this seeming incompatibility may be reconciled, when we con- 

 sider that the history of all languages is but the continual march 

 from synthesis to analysis. 



The Oriental languages, may have originally been quite as much 

 agglutinated, or polysynthetical in their structure, at the time of the 

 alledged emigration of the Aborigines to this continent, as any In- 

 dian tongue now spoken in America. But the time required for 

 Buch a change, would evidently be a margin of many thousands of 

 ages, a period too vast for any definite calculation, simply from the 

 elements of speech. 



But then, no good reason could be assigned why a change should 

 not also take place in the derived languages and in the same direc- 

 tion, as well as in the mother tongue. History, it is true, gives us 

 numerous instances of a first idiom giving place to a vulgar tongue, 

 which finally entirely supplanted it as a vernacular in its second 

 phasis, and that too at a period much more analytical; but never once 

 do we hear of one branch progressing, while the other remained 

 stationary, or pursued an entirely opposite, or perhaps a retrograde 

 course. 



In cases of this kind, where the primitive tongue was over-loaded 

 •with flexions, in order to express the more delicate relations of 

 thought — richer in images, though perhaps poorer in ideas, the mod- 

 ern dialect became clearer — more explicit — separating that which 

 the ancients crowded together — breaking up the mechanism of the 

 ancient tongue, so as to give to each idea, and to each relation, its 

 isolated expression. 



M. Du Ponceau has summed up the general results of his labo- 

 rious and extensive investigations of the American languages, in the 

 three following propositions, viz : Ist, " That the American languages 

 in general, are rich in words and in grammatical forms, and that in 

 their complicated construction, the geatest order, method, and regu- 

 larity prevail." 2d, " That these complicated forms called poly- 

 ynthcf!s.. or olophrastic, appear to exist in all those languages, from 

 Greenland to Cape Horn." 3rd. "That these forms appear to difi'er 

 essentially from those of the ancient and modern languages of the 

 Old Hemisphere." J. p. E. 



