84 HOEATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



Exactly as iu the Aryan languages, this substantive verb becomes an auxiliary verb 

 in forming secondary tenses of other verbs. "With certain particles, vxt, wo, etc., prefixed 

 to the root /?, it helps to make the future or conditional form, thus resembling, as M. 

 Petitot remarks, the English shall, will, should, and would. Thus, Jaedi, they say, has in 

 the future or "eventual" tense, daedi walli, they will or would say. 



Another very common auxiliary verb has for its root le, considered by M. Petitot to 

 be the sa.nie as the word hand, which is la or le in different dialects. He compares its use 

 as an auxiliary and in other respects to that of the English do. It may be well to give a 

 part of its conjugation, to show the error of the common notion, — which was long since 

 exposed by Duponceau, but constantly crops up, — that American languages have not 

 proper inflections, but only agglutinative forms : 



The difference between anle, he does, and anla, he did, is as clearly inflective as that 

 which exists in Latin between facit and fecit. Many still more striking examples could 

 be given ; but for any who have studied these languages they will be needless. "We may 

 turn to certain classes of verbs which vary in their terminations and forms of conjuga- 

 tion according to the nature of the actions or ideas which they express, such as " verbs 

 of motion," " instrumental verbs," " verbs of mental actions," and the like. That there 

 should exist iu a language of wandering savages a distinct class of verbs with peculiar 

 terminations entirely devoted to expressing the operations of the mind will seem to many 

 persons surprising. The surprise, however, will proceed wholly from that prejudice of 

 race which refuses to regard the people of other and especially of less cultured races 

 than our own as endowed with natural capacities equal, and possibly superior, to those 

 which governed our forefathers in the formation of our speech. 



The " verbs of mental actions " comprise all verbs expressive of operations of the 

 intellect and feelings, including thought, mental suffering, passion, will, and the like. 

 They are classed in no fewer than eight conjugations, distinguished by their terminations, 

 each conjugation having its own special form iu the present, past, and future tenses. 

 Thus yenesslien, I think, of the second conjugation, has in the preterite yenidhi, I thought, 

 and in the future (or " eventual " ) yenusshi I shall or may think . Naonhœr, I commit, 

 has for preterite naoslhilshcer, and for its future naivmslhir. It should be observed (as the last 

 example may indicate) that the expression " mental actions " includes in this language a 

 much wider scope than might at first thought be suspected. To this class belong not merely 

 verbs meaning to pity, to trust, to hate, to aspire, and the like, but the verbs to punish, to 

 forbid, to be free, to be hungry (i. e., to desire food), to kill (indicating an action of the will), 

 and even to die, which is apparently regarded as the cessation of mental power. 



Any neuter or intransitive verb may be made transitive or receive a causative significa- 

 tion by inserting the sound of I, derived from le, to do. Thus yenidhen signifies he thinks, 



