37 



'Г 



J he peculiarity of the Eskimo language as polysynthetic, 



as well known , is exhibited in the construction of nouns and 

 verbs by which other classes of words are made almost un- 

 necessary and OiNE NYORD IS ABLE TO EXPRESS A WHOLE SEN- 

 TENCE INCLUDING SCBORDLNATE SENTENCES. It is especially 

 through the Greenland dialect , and in some degree the Labra- 

 dorian that this peculiarity of the language has been thoroughly 

 studied and made known. But it must be regarded as impos- 

 sible that a system which evinces such acute and logical thought 

 as that exhibited in the rules of the Greenland grammar, should 

 have been separately invented by the tribe who peopled Green- 

 land. It is not to be doubted that in the main the grammars 

 of the other dialects bear the same character as that of Green- 

 land. 



The division of the tribes proposed in the preceding chap- 

 ter is also applicable in treating of the dialects. Here of 

 course we are dependent on the existence of sufficient vocabu- 

 laries. As to the Western Eskimo the vocabularies in our 

 possession are headed by about 10 names of tribes, nearly, but 

 not exactly, agreeing with those given before. But I have pre- 

 ferred summing them up under 3 classes: Northern, Southern 

 and Asiatic. For several reasons this division seems quite 

 natural. Only as regards a tribe called Ekogmut and now 

 classed with the Southern, I was somewhat in doubt. Of the 

 Mackenzie and the Labradorian only single glossaries exist 



