Brintoii.] o6\J [March 20, 



shall drown, " I followed the road which j'ou described," means 

 that you described a road, and one of the results of this act of 

 yours was that 1 followed it. 



This explains the plan of constructing compound sentences in 

 Qquichua. Instead of saying " I shall follow the road which 

 you describe," the construction is " You describe, this road I 

 shall follow;" and instead of "I shall drown if I fall in the 

 water," it would be, " I fall in the water, I shall drown." 



The Mexican language introduces the relative clause by the 

 word in, which is an article and demonstrative pronoun, or, if the 

 proposition is a conditional one, b}-- mfia, which reall}' signifies 

 " within this," and conveys the sense that the major is included 

 within the conditions of the minor clause. The Cakchiquel con- 

 ditional particle is vae, if, which appears to be simply the particle 

 of aflSrmation " yes," employed to give extension to the minor 

 clause, which, as a rule, is placed first. 



Or a conventional arrangement of words may be adopted which 

 will convey the idea of certain dependent clauses, as those ex- 

 pressing similitude, as is often the case in Mexican. 



§ 15. The Dual in A.merican Languages. 



' In his admirable philosophical examination of the dual num- 

 ber in language, Humboldt laid the foundation of a linguistic 

 theory of numerals which has not yet received the development 

 it merits. Here he brings into view the dual and plural endings 

 of a list of American languages, and explains the motives on 

 which they base the inclusive and exclusive plurals so common 

 among them. It is, in fact, a species of pronominal dual con- 

 fined to the first person in the plural. 



This, he goes on to say, is by no means the only dual in these, 

 tongues. Some of them express both the other classes of duals 

 which he names. Thus, the Totonaca has duals for all objects 

 which appear as pairs in nature, as the eyes, the ears, the hands, 

 etc. ; while the Araucanian equals the Sanscrit in extending the 

 grammatical expression of the dual through all parts of speech 

 where it can find proper application.* 



* See the essay, Ueber der\ Dualis, Gesammelie Werkc, Bd. vi, ss. 562-596. 



