1885 1 OdJ [Brinton. 



which unites a predicate to the idea of person into one sentence. There 

 is also another whicli by itself conveys the idea of the verb, and of 

 which each person has the signification both of the pronoun and the 

 substantive verb, ''I" and "I am," "thou" and "thou art," etc. 

 Not only is it so used in the present, but it can take the signs of the 

 tenses. It is distinguished from the pronouns previously referred to 

 in the first and second persons of both numbers only by a prefixed (, 

 as follows : 



Pronouns which, with a predicate, Pronouns which, by themselves, 

 convey a verbal idea. possess verbal power. 



ten 



tech 



lai 



toon 

 teex 

 loob 



This similarity leads to the thought that a true phonetic radical may 

 exist in this t, and may induce us to consider this word not as a pro- 

 noun but as a substantive verb. But this makes no difference. The 

 fact remains that the word is used both as a simple pronoun and also 

 as a substantive verb. In the translation of the Lord's Prayer, the 

 word toon is a simple pronoun. If i is a radical, it may just as well 

 come from the pronoun. Some languages offer clear examples of this. 

 In the Maipure the expression for the third person singular recurs 

 with all the other persons, as if this sound meant the person, the man 

 generally, and the first and second persons were denoted as the " I-per- 

 son," " thou-person," etc. In the Achagua language the same radical 

 occurs in all the pronouns, but does not, as in the Maipure, stand alone 

 for the third person singular, but in it, as in the other persons, appears 

 as an affix. 



At any rate, this pronoun answers, in the Maya, all the purposes of 

 the substantive verb, and there is no other in the language. 



It is quite intelligible that in the conceptions of rude nations the idea 

 of an object, and especially of a person, cannot be separated from the 

 idea of his existence. This may be applied to the forms of expression 

 above mentioned. What seems a violent and ungrammatical omission 

 of the verb, is probably in those people an obscure association of 

 thoughts, a non-separation of the object from its being. Probably it is 

 from the same source that in some American languages every adjective 

 is so considered that it includes not the idea alone, but the expression, 

 " it is thus, and thus constituted." 



In the Yaruri language the absence of a phonetic radical meaning 

 " to be" is yet more apparent. Each person of the pronoun is a dif- 

 ferent word, and they have no single letter in common. The pronoun 



