1885.] ol [Brinton. 



not but be surprised after reading Prof. Hartt's opinion above 

 quoted to find him a few pages later introducing us to the fol- 

 lowing example of " word building of a more than usually poly- 

 synthetic character." * 



akdyu, head ; ayu, bad. 



akayayu, crazy. 



muakayayu, to seduce (make crazy). 



xayumuakayayu, I make myself crazy, etc. 



Such examples, however, are not rare, as may be seen by turn- 

 ing over the leaves of Montoya's Tesoro de la Lengua Guarani. 

 The most noticeable and most American peculiarity of such com- 

 pounds is that they are not collocations of words, as are the 

 agglutinative compounds of the Ural-Altaic tongues, but of 

 particles and phonetic elements which have no separate life in 

 the language. 



Father Montoya calls especial attention to this in the first 

 words of his Advertencia to his Tesoro. He says : — " The 

 foundation of this language consists of particles which frequently 

 have no meaning if taken alone ; but when compounded with 

 the whole or parts of others (for they cut them up a great deal 

 in composition) they form significant expressions ; for this 

 reason there are no independent verbs in the language, a3 they 

 are built up of these particles with nouns or pronouns. Thus 

 nemboe is composed of the three particles ne, mo, e. The ne 

 is reciprocal ; mo an active particle ; e indicates skill ; and the 

 whole means 'to exercise oneself,' which we translate, 'to learn,' 

 or 'to teach,' indeterminately; but with the personal sign 

 added, anemboe, ' I learn '." 



This analysis, which Montoya carries much further, reminds 

 us forcibly of the extraordinarily acute analysis of the Cree 

 (Algonkin) by Mr. James Howse. f Undoubtedly the two 



* Notes on the Lingoa Oeral, as above, p. 71. 



t James Howse, A Grammar of the Cree Language (London, 1844). A remark- 

 able production which has never received the attention from linguists which it 

 merits. 



PROC. AMEK. PHILOS: SOC. XXIII. 121. K. PRINTED OCTOBER 26, 1885. 



