1885.] 56 [Brinton. 



forms are peculiar to this part of the world, and that they do 

 not exist in the languages of the old hemisphere." To express 

 this peculiarity, he first employed the adjective syntactic, but 

 later preferred poly synthetic.' 1 ''* 



In his " Report on the General Character and Forms of Ameri- 

 can Languages," in 1819, he explained his views at greater 

 length, and then first distinguishes, though not with desirable 

 lucidity, between the two varieties of s}mthetic construction, 

 the one (incorporation) applicable to verbal forms of expression, 

 the other (polysynthesis) to nominal expressions. His words 

 are — 



" A poly synthetic or syntactic construction of language is that 

 in which the greatest number of ideas are comprised in the least 

 number of words. This is done principally in two ways. 1. By 

 a mode of compounding locutions which is not confined to join- 

 ing two words together, as in Greek, or varying the inflection or 

 termination of a radical word as in most European languages, 

 but by interweaving together the most significant sounds or 

 syllables of each simple word, so as to form a compound that 

 will awaken in the mind at once all the ideas singly expressed 

 by the words from which they are taken. 2. By an analogous 

 combination [of] the various parts of speech, particularly by 

 means of the verb, so that its various forms and inflections will 

 express not only the principal action, but the greatest possible 

 number of the moral ideas and physical objects connected with 

 it, and will combine itself to the greatest extent with those con- 

 ceptions which are the subject of other parts of speech, and in 

 other languages require to be expressed by separate and distinct 

 words. Such I take to be the general character of the Indian 

 languages."! 



* Correspondence between the Rev. John Heckewelder and Peter S. Duponceau, Esq. 

 Letters viii, xvi, and xxiii. 



t Report of the Corresponding Secretary to the Committee, of his progress in the In- 

 vestigation committed to him of the General Character and Forms of the Lan- 

 guages of the American Indians. Read 12th Jan., 1819, in the Transactions of the 

 Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. i, 

 1819, pp. xxx, xxxi. 



