1056 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



formed to meet the claim of every situation. In regard to word- 

 formations, the language is incessantly in statu nascendi. 



The greater number of the suffixes of our languages may be proved 

 to have been originally independent words (e. g., the English -ly, 

 -SHIP, -DOM, -SOME, -FUL, -LESS, etc.). How far the Eskimo suffixes 

 have ever been independent words is extremely doubtful; at apy rate, 

 there is nothing to show that such is the case. 



The Eskimo mode of expression differs essentially from ours in the 

 peculiar power that the suffixes have of linking themselves not simply 

 to an independent word-stem, but to each other, with the result that 

 a complex of ideas may be developed and enlarged within the limits 

 of a single word. We think in sentences, but the Eskimo's thought 

 lives and moves in the word as an embryo in the womb. Even the 

 object of the verb is included in the word-sentence; e. g., iLLoqarpoya 



I HAVE A HOUSE. 



§ 58. Inflection and Poly synthesis 



These peculiar characteristics have determined the viewpoint taken 

 b}' philologists in regard to the Eskimo language. This may be seen 

 in the work of the Danish scholar Rasmus Rask, who knew the lan- 

 guage through the grammars of the missionaries Paul Egede (1760) 

 and Otho Fabricius (1791, 2d ed. 1801), and who has described it in a 

 chapter of his " Undersogelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske 

 Sprogs Oprindelse" (1818). 



H. Steinthal ^ referred the Eskimo and the Mexican languages to a 

 special type, the so-called einyerleibende type of W. v. Humboldt, 

 which "draws the object into the verb and usually also combines the 

 governing word (regens) and the attribute into a whole. . . . The 

 word-formation has swallowed up the sentence-formation, the sentence 

 merges into the word; those who use these languages do not speak in 

 sentences, but in words." According to Steinthal, this type of lan- 

 guage belongs neither to the agglutinative nor to the stem- isolating 

 type; it must be called a " formless" type of language. 



Lucien Adam, who, at the Americanist Congress of 1883, spoke on 

 the relation of the Greenland language to other languages, arrived at 

 the conclusion that the Eskimo language is not polysynthetic, as are 

 many other languages of North America, but is only a derivative lan- 



» H. Steinthal, Charakteristik der hauptsachlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues (Neubearbeitung voa 

 Misteli, Berlin, 1893). 



§58 



