176 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. I. 



CHAPTER 11. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DENE LANGUAGES. 



It would be difficult to assign in one word the place which the D^n^ 

 languages occupy among the chief classifications into which modern philo- 

 logists have divided the human speech on the basis of its grammatical 

 structure. Certain writers, and even eminent scholars, too fond of gene- 

 ralizations, have given as characteristics of the American languages traits 

 which really pertain only to some of them. W. von Humboldt pointed to 

 the agglutinative tendency of their verbs as to their chief characteristic* 

 and Wiseman quotes in support of this view Malte Brun's remark to the 

 effect that " this wonderful uniformity in the particular manner of form- 

 ing the conjugation of verbs from one extremity of America to the other 

 favours in a singular manner the supposition of a primitive people which 

 formed the common stock of the American indigenous natives."-f- Now, 

 it so happens that the D^n^ verbs are not formed by agglutination, :|: and 

 are just as inflected as the Latin or Greek verbs. 



More recently Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, in a paper, otherwise full 

 of valuable hints concerning the peculiarities of the American languages 

 considered as an independent linguistic group, makes the following re- 

 marks, the first of which he emphasizes by the use of italics : " TJie 

 Indian noun is not separable as a part of speech from the verb. Every name 

 is not merely descriptive but predicative. . . In short, every Indian 

 name is in fact a verb."§ Yet, with all the respect due to such an autho- 

 rity on American philology as Dr. Trumbull, I must state that there are 

 in D^n^ many nouns which have no relation whatever to the verb ; nay, 

 the great majority of them is altogether independent therefrom, and they 

 are just as purely nominative as the English " house," " lake," " bear," etc. 



In a former paper I have referred to the remarkable propensity of the 

 Ddn^ nation for the self-appropriation of foreign practices and customs. 

 Its language likewise presents to the investigator features so varied as to 

 suggest a mixed origin for the whole stock, but more especially for the 

 Western tribes. It is at the same time compounding, agglutinative, in- 

 flective, and polysynthetic. || Not, of course that it possesses each and 



* ^/?/(3!' Wiseman, xii Lectures on the Connection betw. Science and Revel. Lect. II. p. 82. 



+ Il>td. 



t At least as this word is now understood and applied by philologists. 



§ Transact. Am. Philol. Assoc. 1869-70. 



II I apply to these epithets the sense given them in the 2d Edit, of Powell's Introduc. to the 

 Study of Ind. Lang. p. 56. 



