Brinton.] *^4:4 [March 20, 



Call is consequently a true auxiliary verb ; Zen, when it appears in 

 conjunction with en must have the notion of Being understood : ah 

 appears to be of similar nature, but as it appears only in the conjuga- 

 tion of transitive verbs, it is a verbal sign, and thus receives its verbal 

 power. That call and ah do really possess tliis povvever is evident from 

 the- fact that they are never used whenever either of the pronouns 

 which are always associated with the notion of Being is present. 



Except in the future of transitive verbs, there is no instance in the 

 conjugation where the stem of the verb is not accompanied by one of 

 these four syllables, all of which indicate Being, and all of which have 

 the force of auxiliary verbs. 



The future of transitive verbs not only does not take any of these 

 syllables, but even rejects ah when it is the terminal syllable of the 

 stem. In this case no other termination replaces it. On the contrary, 

 all other verbs receive a new suffix in their future, varying as they are 

 of one or many syllables. The nature of these suffixes has not been ex- 

 plained. 



The definite results of this analysis are as follows : 



1. The Maya language possesses in its conjugation, besides the inflec- 

 tion syllables of the persons and tenses, another element, which, ex- 

 cept in the simple future of transitive verbs, distinctly carries with it 

 the notion of Being ; in the future of most verbs there is such an ele- 

 ment, but of imknown origin, and it only fails in the future of one 

 class of verbs. 



2. This language displays an effort to express, besides the other pur- 

 poses of the verb, particularly its synthetic power, which is all the more 

 apparent as it uses different means in different cases, but all designed 

 to accomplish the same purpose. 



The Yaruri language constructs the whole of its conjugation in a 

 yet simpler manner by means of an auxiliary verb. 



The union of the pronoun and the tense sign which, as we ha^# 

 already seen, forms the substantive verb, affixed to the stem, completes 

 the inflections of the one and only conjugation of attributive verbs, 

 except that the independent pronouns are prefixed. Neither the stem 

 nor the auxiliary words suffer any changes, except the insertion of an 

 n in one person. The union remains, however, a loose one, and when 

 person and tense are manifest by the connection, the auxiliary verb 

 is omitted. This happens in certain verbs ending in 2M. These, con- 

 trary to the usual rule, change in the perfect this termination to pea, 

 by which the tense is made apparent, and as the person is evident from 

 the prefixed personal pronoun, the auxiliary can be dropped without 

 danger of obscurity. 



The formation of certain tenses by means of auxiliaries is also fre- 

 quent in American languages. 



An optative of this nature in the Lule language has already been 

 mentioned. 



