Brinton.] ddo [March 2r, 



maha, Thou wert the enriched. Here no-munti is '' the enriched," and 

 all the remaining syllables are verbal inflections. Sandoval, wlio wrote 

 a grammar of the language, explains no as an auxiliary verb ; but with 

 the noun he calls it an article, as it is, and he evidently misunderstood 

 the expression. It is wholly a verbal, but as this procedure can be 

 applied to any noun whatever, such an expression is far removed from 

 a real, well-defined verbal form. 



The same language has another peculiar form with the possessive, 

 which can only be explained by supplying an omitted verb. Na nuhti 

 means " my property ;" but if to this is added the abbreviated pronoun 

 used as a verbal affix, na-nuhti-gd, the words mean, "this property 

 belongs to me," or, " my property is it, mine." 



In the grammatically obscure consciousness of these people, the ideas 

 of verbal and merely pronominal expression are confounded, as also in 

 the Brazilian language, where " my father" and "I have a father" are 

 expressed by the same word. 



The advantages which these languages derive from the formation of 

 sentences Avith the verb omitted are two. 



They can change any noun into a verb, or at least they can treat it as 

 such. It is true that this can also be done by a substantive verb when 

 one is found, but as the languages in question unite the noun to the 

 verbal flexions, their freedom is much greater. 



The second advantage is, that when it is desirable to discriminate 

 clearly between the two kinds of verbs, the one which has at base an 

 energic attribute, the other which merely expresses the relation of 

 predicate to subject, a thing to its qualities, this end can be much 

 better reached by the process described than even by the substantive 

 verb, which, by its full verbal form, always recalls the action of an 

 energic attribute. 



Many of the languages named include in these expressions particles 

 of time, thereby obscuring the distinction referred to. But in others 

 this is not the case. Thus in the Maya and Beto there are two conju- 

 gations, one with the pronoun without time particles, and one with 

 them ; and as in both these tongues the present of the true conjugation 

 has a characteristic tense sign, a separate aorist of the present is formed 

 by the other conjugation, which our cultivated tongues cannot express 

 so conveniently. 



2. When the notion of Being is expressed by a special loord, hut without 

 a phonetic radical. 



Although the assumption here expressed sounds at first rather enig- 

 matical, yet one can soon see that if the notion of Being is to be con- 

 veyed without a phonetic radical, it can only be done through the sign 

 of the person, that is, in the pronoun, with or without a tense sign. 

 This is actually the case in two languages, the Maya and the Yaruri. 



We have already seen that in the Maya there is a special pronoun 



