Brinlon.l O^A [March 20. 



As its capacity for expression is no criterion of a language, 

 still less is the abundance or regularity of its forms. For this 

 very multiplicity, this excessive superfluity, is a burden and a 

 drawback, and obscures the integration of the thought by attach- 

 ing to it a quantity of needless qualifications. Thus, in the lan- 

 guage of the Abipones, the pronoun is different as the person 

 spoken of is conceived as present, absent, sitting, walking, lying, 

 or running, all quite unnecessary specifications.* 



In some languages much appears as form which, on close 

 scrutiny, is nothing of the kind. 



This misunderstanding has reigned almost universally in the 

 treatment of American tongues. The grammars which have 

 been written upon them proceed generally on the principles of 

 Latin, and apply a series of grammatical names to the forms 

 explained, entirely inappropriate to them and misleading. Our 

 first duty in taking up such a grammar as, for instance, that of 

 an American language, is to dismiss the whole of the arrange- 

 ment of the " parts of speech," and, by an analysis of words and 

 phrases, to ascertain by what arrangement of elements they ex- 

 press logical, significant relations.f 



For example, in the Carib tongue, the grammai's give aveiri- 

 daco as the second person singular, subjunctive imperfect, " if 

 thou wert." Analyze this, and we discover that a is the posses- 

 sive pronoun " thy ;" veiri is " to be " or " being " (in a place) ; 

 and daco is a particle of definite time. Hence, the literal ren- 

 dering is " on the day of thj- being." The so-called imperfect 

 subjunctive turns out to be a verbal noun with a preposition. In 

 many American languages the hypothetical supposition ex- 

 pressed in the Latin subjunctive is indicated b}^ the same cir- 

 cumlocution. 



Again, the infinitive, in its classical sense, is unknown in most, 

 probably in all, American languages. In the Tupi of Brazil and 

 frequently elsewhere it is simply a noun ; caru is both '' to eat " 



* Ueber d is Eatstehen der grammaUschen Formen,'' etc., Werke, Bd. iii, s. 292. 



t Speaking of such "imperfect" languages, he gives the following wise sug- 

 gestion for their study : " Ilir einfaches Geheimniss, welches den Weg anzeigt, 

 auf welchem man sie, mitganzliciier Vergessenheitunserer Grammatik.'immer 

 zuerst zu entr.tlhseln versuclien muss, ist, das in sicli Bedeutende unmittelbar 

 an eiuander zu reihen " Ueber das Vergleichende SprachsMdium, etc., Werke, Bd. 

 iii, s. 235; and for a practical illustration of his method, see the essay, Ueber 

 das Entstehen der gramnialischen Formen, etc., Bd. iii, s. 27-i. 



