210 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
their common relation to a parent stock. All the Maya-Quiche 
dialects use prepositions, while the surrounding languages, Aztec, 
Mixtec, Pima, Tarahumara, etc., employ postpositions. The Quiche 
verb, again, is the precise analogue of the Algonquin, the only difference 
being that the pronoun, instead of occupying an initial position, inter- 
venes between the temporal index and the root. Thus, in ca-nxu-logoh, 
I am loving, 2¢-u-logoh, | have loved, and ch-zn-logoh, I shall love, ca, x7 
and ch are the indices of present, past and future time, #2 and ch being 
the equivalents of the Algonquin gz and ge, or, better still, of the Cree £7 
and ka. In Maya also the accusative seems to follow the governing verb 
as in Algonquin. There is, however in these languages an important 
syntactical peculiarity which does not appear in Algonquin, so far as is 
known to me; it is the postposition of the genitive without sign, as in 
the Semitic and Celtic languages. Thus in Maya, wpoc Pedro, ‘the hat 
of Peter,’ reverses the order of the Iroquois, Dacotah and Choctaw, which 
is that of the English, ‘ Peter’s hat... The Algonquin dialects follow the 
latter order, and it may fairly be asked whether this be not a result of 
surrounding influences rather than one of the original forms of Algonquin 
speech. Apart from this, however, there are, in the use of prepositions, 
the preposition of the temporal index and the postposition of the 
accusative, together with phonetic coincidence, links sufficient to ally 
the Algonquin with the Maya-Quiche languages. 
“The next great family of languages which employs prepositions is 
found in La Plata and Paraguay on the Gran Chaco, and is known as 
the Mbaya-Abipone, including the Mocobi, Toba, Lengua, and other 
dialects. Here, again, we meet with “soft vocalic forms,” contrasting 
more or less with the manlier utterances of the Peruvian and Chileno 
tribes, who almost invariably employ postpositions. The verb, again, 
is essentially the same as that of the Quiche, the pronoun intervening 
between the temporal index and the root; thus in xe-ya-enaguz, | came, 
de-ya-enagut, | shall come, ze is the index of past, and de of future time. 
But, in the neighbouring Peruvian and Chileno languages, the temporal 
index follows the verbal root, as in Iroquois, Dacotah, etc. Of the 
positions of the accusative and genitive in this family I am not able to 
speak. It is worthy of note, however, that in Mbaya the adjective 
follows the noun it qualifies, while in the Maya-Quiche and Algonquin 
languages it precedes, as in the majority of American tongues. The 
identity in form of the Mbaya and the Quiche verb, a form in itself so 
peculiar, and differing so widely from those of nearly all other American 
languages, is the main link uniting the earlier fortunes of the Mbaya- 
Abipone family with those of the Maya-Quiche and the Algonquin. 
