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infinitive, by being placed before the noun that gov- 

 erns it, makes a gerund of the genitive ; as pin-antu^ 

 it is the time of speaking: but whenever it indicates 

 motion it admits the articles ni^ meu or mo, as 721 pa- 

 gitujn cupan^ I come to hunting lions. The parti- 

 ciple passive is also employed for thii. purpose with 

 the same articles. 



Participles and gerunds are very frequent in this 

 language, or rather, they occur in almost every sen- 

 tence ; whence all the offices of the infinitive and the 

 relative are usually performed by the participle or 

 the gerund. 



Laconism is the principal characteristic of the 

 Chilian. From hence arises the almost constant 

 practice of including the passive case in its verb, 

 which when thus combined is conjugated in ever}' 

 respect as it is when by itself. A Chilian rarely 

 says eliin ruca^ I give the house, but in order to 

 express himself with precision he will immediately 

 form both words into the verb elurucan^ which sig- 

 nifies the same thing. They pursue a similar me- 

 thod with the pronouns, cluun^ I give myself; cluen^ 

 I give you ; eluvin, I give him or them. This man- 

 ner of arranging the pronouns, which has some re- 

 semblance to the Hebrew, is called by the Chilian 

 grammarians transition. Of this they distinguish 

 seven kinds, which render the attainment of the lan- 

 guage very difficult at first, from the particularity 

 that is requisite to be observed in the use of theni. 



From the same principle proceeds the no less sin- 

 gular practice, already noticed, of converting all tlie 

 parts of speech into verbs, in such a maimer that the 



