HINTS AND EXPLANATIONS. 65 
2. Particles which serve as prepositions and post-positions, conjunctions and, occa- 
sionally, adverbs. Nearly all of these appear to be remnants of verbs and for the most 
part are susceptible of conjugation as verbs. Their verbal origin may be matter of 
subsequent investigation, but a careful study of them in their present forms is essen- 
tial, at the very outset, to thorough knowledge of a language; for they have much to 
do with the construction of syntheses and exert great influence in the modification of 
verbal roots. 
3. The Numerals, cardinal, ordinal, and distributive. For the collection and 
analysis of these, some suggestions are given in “Instructions for research relative to 
the Ethnology and Philology of America,” prepared for the Smithsonian Institution 
by Col. George Gibbs.* As the numerals are always significant, it should be a special 
aim of the collector to ascertain the precise meaning of each. Does the word used for 
one signify “‘a small thing,” “a beginning,” “the little one” (7. e. finger), “undivided,” 
or “that which is left behind or passed by”? Does three mean “the middle finger”? 
Is fiwe “the hand,” “the closed fist,” or ‘‘all” the fingers? Is six ‘“five-one,” “one 
more,” or “one held up” (i. e. one of the fingers which had been doubled down)? Is nine 
‘one left,” or ‘one less than,” or “one wanting”? Is eleven ‘‘one again” or “ten more 
one”? Is twenty, as in the Hskimo, “ one man” (i. e. all the fingers and toes)? Every 
such question that is answered throws some light on the structure and method of synthe- 
sis and may help establish the relationship of the language. 
4, Primary Verbs. Of these and of the tendency to the concentration of complex 
ideas in a single word, which is characteristic of the American languages, I have 
already spoken. Recollect that the Indian verb is almost always holophrastic. It 
affirms—not action or existence generally, but—some special and limited act or con- 
ditioned existence; consequently, it can seldom, if ever, be adequately translated by an 
English verb without adverbial qualification. 
5. Concrete Nouns. We have seen that these are not, as in the inflectional lan- 
guages so many names have come to be, mere unmeaning marks. They are descrip- 
tive and definitive; specific, not general; and each retains the verb form or embodies 
a verb. Every synthesis is so framed as to differentiate the object it serves to name 
from every other object known to the speaker, and this so explicitly as to be intelligible 
to every hearer. The English word horse tells us nothing about the animal it names. 
Etymologists who can establish its connection with the Sanskrit hrésh may find a rea- 
son for its appropriation to “the neigher,” but we use it without having a conscious- 
ness of any such intrinsic significance, recognizing it, only because we have been taught 
to do so, as the distinguishing mark which has been set upon a species, just as—regard- 
less of etymological suggestions—we recognize ‘‘ Charles” or ‘‘ William” as the distin- 
guishing mark of an individual. The American languages permit the use of no such 
names without meaning. The native of Massachusetts who saw a horse for the first 
time distinguished it from all animals he had previously known, as “the beast that 
carries on his back a living burden,” and this name once heard enabled every Indian 
of the tribe, or who understood the language, to identify the animal whenever it came 
in his way. So the Chippeway could recognize by its name alone the creature ‘“ whose 
hoofs are all solid,” and so the Dakota knew at sight the “‘ wonderful domestic animal” 
introduced by the white man. 
* Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 160 (vol. vii, art. xi). 
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