76 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Malay-Polynesian follow his native order, but the other Asiatic and 
European tongues called Turanian invert it, after the variations of the 
Sanserit which has suffered much from Turanian admixture. Language 
is made up of two classes of terms, whether words proper or particles, 
and these two classes are the concrete and the abstract, in other words, 
terms denoting being and action, and terms denoting relation or quality. 
The Indo-European, the Celtic, and the Semitic mind give prominence or 
priority to the abstract ; the northern Turanian, to the concrete. The 
preposition in is an abstract term, while house is concrete. We say, and 
all the people we know, say “in the house” ; but the Basque and the 
Japanese say “the house in,” making the abstract term a.post-position. 
In Aramaic we say Bar-Nabas, the son of Nabas, in Gaclic, MacDonald, 
the son of Donald, in French le fils de Pierre ; but in English and in all 
the Teutonic languages it is allowable to say Nabas’s son, Donald’s son, 
Peter’s son. The latter, with or without the mark of possession, which 
is a post-position, is the Basque and the Japanese order. As the abstract 
is subordinated 10 the concrete, so is the generic to the specific term. 
Preposing languages occasionally postpone as the Sanscrit does largely. 
There may be exceptions to the converse, but they are so few that it may 
be said that postponing languages never prepose. This is the most valid 
distinction of forms of speech I know, and I wonder much that the 
collectors of foreign vocabularies have not had their attention called to 
itrather than to far fetched terms of kinship which link the useless with 
the oft impossible. 
By far the larger number of our best known families of American 
speech are postponing, like the Basque and the Japanese ; they never 
use prepositions, nor do they prepose other particles denoting relation. 
Some Algonquin dialects use post-positions occasionally, but their logical 
and common order is preposing, which essentially differentiates them 
from the adjacent Dakota, Iroquois, and Choctaw-Maskoki groups. 
Many years ago I published a paper, now become exceedingly rare, 
entitled “The Affiliation of the Algonquin Languages,” in which I 
exhibited the radical unity of these dialects with those of the Malay-Po- 
lynesian area, both in grammatical forms and in vocabulary. Algonquin 
features, their taciturnity and rigorous etiquette with each other, their 
lacustrine and fluviatile habits, their insular heaven, their creation from 
vegetable forms, their Manitou, which is just the anito or spirit of the 
Malay Archipelago with prefixed article, their head-hunting, lack of 
pottery and similar manufactures, failure to worship the sun, all combine 
with their language to show that, wherever they first landed on the 
American coast, they so landed at some remote period in large war 
prahus from the islands of the Pacific. What resemblance they now 
present, in appearance and dress, in’arts and customs, to a certain extent 
in language, to neighbouring tribes, has been the result of long contact 
with them. 
