INDIANS (LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN 



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Combines itself with other parts of speech, as, with 

 /he conjunction also; nepe (I also); kepe (thou also), 

 &c. One further peculiarity in the separable pro- 

 nouns deserves notice. In conformity, as it should 

 seem, with the general classification of Indian words 

 into animate and inanimate, the personal pronoun has 

 only two modes, as they may be called, the one ap- 

 plicable to the animate, and the other to the inani- 

 mate class; thus the separable pronoun of the third 

 person, nekama, answers both to he and she in Eng- 

 lish. If we wish to distinguish between the sexes, 

 we must add to it the word man or woman; thus, in 

 Delaware, nekama lenno means he, or this man, and 

 nekama ochqueu means she, or this woman. (i) 

 Demonstrative and Relative Pronouns. The modes 

 of expressing these by various forms and combina- 

 tions are numerous. Doctor Edwards, it is true, 

 says the Mohegan dialect lias no relative correspond- 

 ing to our who and which ; but Eliot, in the Massa- 

 chusetts language, and Zeisberger, in the Delaware, 

 give this relative as a distinct, independent part of 

 speech. 



5. Verbs. The Indian languages exhibit almost 

 an endless variety in their verbs. Every part of 

 speech may be compounded with the verb in various 

 ways. Its fundamental idea, as Mr Du Ponceau 

 observes, in his notes to Eliot's Grammar, is that of 

 existence, I am, sum. This abstract sentiment re- 

 ceives shape and body from its combination with the 

 various modifications of being, by action, passion, 

 and situation, or manner of existing; / am loving, 

 loved, sleeping, awake, sorry, sick, which the Latin 

 tongue more synthetically expresses by one word, 

 amo, amor, dormio, vigilo, contristor, eegroto. Next 

 come the accessary circumstances of person, number, 

 time, and the relations of its periods to each other; 

 / am, ive are, I was, I shall le, I had been, I shall 

 have been. Here the Latin again combines these 

 various ideas in one word with the former ones; sum, 

 es, sumus, eram, ero, fueram, fuero. Sometimes it 

 goes further, and combines the negative idea in the 

 same locution, as in nolo. This, however, happens 

 but rarely; and here seem to end the verbal powers 

 of this idiom. Not so with those of the Indian na- 

 tions. While the Latin combines but few adjectives 

 under its verbal forms, the Indians subject this whole 

 class of words to the same process, and every possible 

 mode of existence becomes the subject of a verb. 

 The gender or genus not, as with us, a mere divi- 

 sion of the human species by their sex, but of the 

 whole creation, by the obvious distinction of animate 

 and inanimate enters also into the composition of 

 this part of speech, and the object of the active or 

 transitive verb is combined with it by means of those 

 forms which the Spanish-Mexican grammarians call 

 transitions, by which one single word designates the 

 person who acts, and that which is acted upon. 

 The substantive is incorporated with the verb in a 

 similar manner; thus, in the Delaware, n'matshi (I 

 am going to the house); nihilla pewi (I am my own 

 master, I am free); tpisquihilleu (the time approaches 

 [properat hora~]). The adverb likewise: nachpiki 

 (I am so naturally); nipahwi (to travel by night 

 [noctanterj) ; pachsenummen (to divide '[something] 

 equally), &c. What shall we say, then, of the 

 reflected, compulsive, meditative, communicative, 

 reverential, frequentative, and other circumstantial 

 verbs, which are to be found in the idioms of New 

 Spain and other American Indian languages? The 

 mind is lost in the contemplation of the multitude of 

 ideas thus expressed at once, by means of a single 

 word, varied through moods, tenses, persons, affirma- 

 tion, negation, transitions, &c. , by regular forms and 

 cadences, in which the strictest analogy is preserved. 

 (a) Substantive Verb. It has been already ob- 



served, that the Indian languages are generally 

 destitute of the verb to be. In the Delaware, ac- 

 cording to Zeisberger's Grammar, the verbs to have 

 and to be do not exist, either as auxiliaries, or in the 

 abstract substantive sense, which they present to an 

 European mind. The verb to have always conveys 

 the idea of possession, and to be, that of a particular 

 situation of the body or mind; and they may each be 

 combined, like other verbs, with other accessary 

 ideas. Thus the verb to have, or possess, is com- 

 bined with the substantive or thing possessed, as 

 follows: n'damochol* (I have a canoe); nowikin (\ 

 have a house). The idea conveyed by the substan- 

 tive verb to be, is expressed by various combinations 

 with other parts of speech; as, ni n'damochol (it is my 

 canoe) . It is also combined with the relative pronoun 

 auwen (who); thus, ewenikia (who I am), ewenikit 

 (who he is), &c.' (b) Animate and Inanimate Verts. 

 We have already alluded to this distinction of the 

 verbs; but this requires illustration by examples. 

 The two verbal forms, nolhatton and nolhalla, in the 

 Delaware, both mean / possess; but the former can 

 only be used in speaking of the possession of things 

 inanimate, and the latter of living creatures; as, 

 nolhatton achquiwanissal (I have or possess blan- 

 kets); cheeli kcecu n'nolhattowi (many things I am 

 possessed of; or, I possess many things); wak neche- 

 naunges nolhallau (and I possess a horse). The 

 letter u, at the end of the verb nolhallau, conveys 

 the idea of the pronoun him; so that it is the same as 

 if we said, and a horse 1 possess him. Again, in the 

 verb to see, the same distinction is made; as, lenno 

 newau (I see a man); tsholens newau (I see a bird); but, 

 in the case of an inanimate object, they say, for exam- 

 ple, wikwam nemen (I see a house); amochol nemen (\ 

 see a canoe), &c. It is the same with other verbs, 

 such, for example, as we call neuters : thus they say 

 icka-shingieshin n'dallemous (there lies my beast); 

 but, on the other hand, icka shingiesh-en n'tamahican 

 (yonder lies my hatchet or tomahawk). The i or e, 

 in the last syllable of the verb, as here used in the 

 third person, constitutes the difference which indi- 

 cates, that the thing spoken of has or has not life. 



(c) Adjective Verbs. This name is given by Mr 

 Zeisberger to a description of words, respecting 

 whose proper classification, he had much doubt. On 

 the one hand, he found that there were in the 

 Delaware language, pure adjectives, which receive 

 different forms when employed in the verbal sense ; 

 such as wulit, wulik, wulisso (good, handsome, pret- 

 ty); wulilissu (he, she, or it, is good, pretty, or 

 handsome), and several others. But these are not 

 very numerous. A great number of them are im per 

 sonal verbs, in the third person singular of the pre 

 sent tense; while others are conjugated through 

 various persons, moods, and tenses. He decided, at 

 last, to include them all in a list, which Mr Du 

 Ponceau has called adjective verbs, in analogy with 

 the name of another class, denominated adverbial 

 verbs, which are formed by, or derived from adverbs 

 Examples : guneu, long (it is); guneep, it was long. 

 machkeu, red (it is); machkeep, it was red, &c. 



(d) Adverbial verbs. These are formed from adverbs; 

 as, from shingi (unwillingly), they form the verb 

 shingilendam (to dislike, to be against the will or in- 

 clination); from shack i (so far, so long) is formed 

 shackoochen (to go so far off and no further). (e) 

 Irregular Verbs. These are chiefly of the class 

 which we call impersonal; but they do not all belong 

 to it. Of those which are called irregular, in the 

 ancient and modern languages of Europe, that is, 



' The apostrophe in the word n'damochol indicates a 

 sheva or mute vowel. Eliot, in his Massachusetts Gram- 

 mar, denotes it by the English short u : nttttappin or 

 n'dttppin. (Du Ponceau.) 



