Brinton.] "^ [Oct. 2, 



verbal and what it embraces), nouns and adjectives are not de- 

 clined. The " eases " which appear in many grammars of Ameri- 

 can languages are usually indications of space or direction, or 

 of possession, and not case-endings in the sense of Aryan 

 grammar. 



A further consequence of the same method is the absence of 

 true relative pronouns, of copulative conjunctions, and generally 

 •of the machinery of dependent clauses. The devices to intro- 

 duce subordinate propositions I have referred to in the pre- 

 vious essay already mentioned. 



As the effort to speak in sentences rather than in words entails- 

 •constant variation in these word-sentences, there arise both an 

 •enormous increase in verbal forms and a multiplication of ex- 

 pressions for ideas closely allied. This is the cause of the 

 apparently endless conjugations of many such tongues, and also 

 of the exuberance of their vocabularies in words of closely simi- 

 lar signification. It is an ancient error — which T however,. I find 

 ^repeated in the official "Introduction to the Study of Indian 

 Languages" issued by our Bureau of Ethnology — that the 

 primitive condition of languages is one "where few ideas are 

 expressed by few words," On the contrary, languages structu- 

 rally at the bottom of the scale have an enorrmous and' useless 

 •exeess of words. The savage tribes of the plains will call a 

 color by three or four different words as it appears on different 

 •objects. The Eskimo has about twenty words for fishing, de- 

 pending on the nature of the fish pursued. All this arises- from 

 the u holophrastic " plan of thought. 



It will be seen from these explanations that the^ definition 

 of Incorporation as given by M. Lucien Adam (quoted above) 

 is entirely «erroneous, and that of Professor Muller is visibly in- 

 adequate. The former reduces it to a nacre matter of position 

 or placement; the latter either does not distinguish it frompoly- 

 .synthesis, or limits it to only one of its several expressions* 



In fact, Incorporation may take place with any one of the six 



