168 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



mood signs, that is to say, the process by which the higher phase is 

 evolved or developed out of the lower ; and he cites several good 

 examples in successive stages of transition, for instance, he says that 

 the actual process of transition from the incorporated, the distin- 

 guishing feature of the American family, to the inflexional is 

 presented to us in the Mbaya tongue where we find such verbal forms 

 as " daladi" which means, thou wilt throw ; '• nilahuite " which means, 

 he has spun, where the d is the sign of the future and n of the 

 perfect. At first sight they look like t7'ue infl xions, but on closer 

 examination we find that (/ is in fact simply a relic of the word 

 " guide " meaning, hereafter or later, and n stands in the same relation 

 to the word ^' quine " which means, "and also" and both have their 

 independent signification at the present time. But it is quite con- 

 ceivably and highly probable that at no distant date, the independent 

 signification of these abbreviated words will gradually slip, as has 

 actually been the case in the Mexican and Tamanaca tongues, from 

 the mind of the speaker and be lost and the letters will then become 

 purely formal elements denoting the tense of the verb and nothing 

 more. Indeed some of the American tongues may be said to have 

 already reached the inflexional stage, their primary tenses ending in 

 different letters, ior example in the Mexican language there are the 

 terminals "ya" or "a" in the imperfect and the augment "o" in 

 the preterite and others in the future. In the Tamanaca also the 

 present ends in a, the preterite in e, the future in c, and in speaking 

 of these Humboldt says "there is nothing in either of these tongues 

 to show that these tense signs have independent meanings as they 

 once undoubtly had ; and there is no reason why they should not be 

 classed with those of the Greek and Sanskrit as true inflexional 

 elements." It is clear then from this that a study of the American 

 tongues is absolutely necessary in order to a right understanding of 

 the process by which the inflexional is developed from a preceding 

 stage and if there were any doubt about this the laboi-s of Dr. Brinton 

 in this field would soon remove it. But as it was not the intention 

 of my paper to demonstrate the processes by which the several phases 

 cf language pass into one another although the subject is a most 

 enticing and atti'active one, we will return to the point from which 

 this digression on the sythetic process has led us. "What most 

 astonishes us then in reading through Mons. Havelocque's paper is 



