188.5.J OOO [Brinton. 



SO by this use. In the former case the substantive verb is merely un- 

 derstood, in the latter it appears in a definite word, but without a fixed 

 radical. 



1. When the notion of Being is understood. 



One of the most common forms of sentences in American languages 

 is to bring together an adjective and a substantive, the substantive 

 verb being omitted. 



Mexican : in Pedro qualli, the Peter (is) good. 



Totonaca : aquit chixco, I (am) a man. 



Iluasteca : naxe uxum ibaua tzichniel^ this wom.an (is) not thy ser- 

 vant. 



In the Mixteca language such expressions have a peculiar arrange- 

 ment. The adjective must precede the substantive, or rather the predi- 

 cate must precede the subject, as in the reverse case the words are 

 luiderstood separately, and are not connected into a sentence : quadza 

 naha, the woman is bad ; naha quadza, the bad woman. 



In the language of the Mbaj'as, a sentence can be made with any 

 verb by dropping the verbal affixes, by transposing a letter character- 

 izing the nouns as such, appending an adjective suffix, and uniting this 

 with an independent pronoun. The grammars of this language call 

 this form a passive, but it is just as much a neuter, and is not a verb 

 but a phrase. Fvom iigaichini, to teach, we have n-iigaichin-igi, t^iught, 

 and as first person e n-iigaichin-igi, I am taught. The initial n whicli 

 accompanies all nouns in this language, is merely the possessive pro- 

 noun of the third person, added according to the usage of many of 

 these tongues to leave no noun without a possessive; the termination 

 igi is a particle which indicates the place wbere anything remains. 

 Literally, therefore, eniigaichinigi means, I (am) the stopping-place of 

 his teaching, i. e., one wlio is taught. All affixes of mode and tense, 

 however, may be united to this phrase, so that thus it approaches a 

 verb. 



Regarded apart from the changes through tenses and modes, the 

 union of the subject and predicate with the substantive verb omitted, 

 is admirably adapted to express the conjunction of two words in one 

 idea, and as the languages which make use of it also possess the ordi- 

 nary forms of conjugation, they thus possess a special expression for 

 both the forms of verbs above referred to. We shall note this particu- 

 larly in the Beto language. 



When the subject is not an independent part of speech, but an affixed 

 pronoun, the analogy of this method of notation to a verbal form in- 

 creases. For this is present even wlien no characteristic of a tense is 

 added, simply by the union of an attribute and a pronoun. It should 

 be remarked once for all, however, that too much weight must not be 

 attached to whether these elements form one word or not, as this is not 

 an infallible criterion. 



