Brinton.] OO Oct. 2, 



Equally narrow is his definition of incorporation. He writes, 

 " When the object is intercalated between the subject and the 

 verbal theme, there is incorporation.'' 1 If this is to be under- 

 stood as an explanation of the German expression, Einverlei- 

 bung, then it has been pared down until nothing but the stem is 

 left. 



As to Dr. Lieber's suggestion of holophrastio as an adjective 

 expressing the plan of thought at the basis of polysynthesis and 

 incorporation, M. Adam summarily dismisses it as "a pedantic 

 succedaneum " to our linguistic vocabulary. 



I cannot acknowledge that the propositions so carefully worked 

 up by Humboldt and Steinthal have been refuted by M. Adam ; 

 I must say, indeed, that the jejune significance he attaches to 

 the incorporative process seems to me to show that he did not 

 grasp it either as a structural motive in language, or as a wide 

 reaching psychological process. 



Professor Friedrich Midler, whose studies of American lan- 

 guages are among the most extended and profitable of the present 

 time, has not given to this peculiar feature the attention which 

 we might reasonably expect. Indeed, there appears in the 

 standard treatise on the science of language which 'he is now 

 engaged in publishing almost the same vagueness as to the nature 

 of incorporation which I have pointed out in the writings of M. 

 Adam. Thus, on one page he defines incorporating languages as 

 those "which do away with the distinction between the word and 

 the sentence ;" while on another page he explains incorporation as 

 " the including of the object within the body of the verb." * He 

 calls it " a peculiarity of most American languages, but not of 

 all." That the structural process of incorporation is by no means 

 exhausted by the reception of the object within the body of the 

 verb, even that this is not requisite to incorporation, I shall en- 

 deavor to show. 



*<!rttndriss der Spravhwissenschaft. Von Dr. Fried rich MUller. Compare Bd. 

 i , s. 88, und Bd. ii, s. 182. 



