INCORPORATION. 665 



all portions of this language, although the instances where we can ti'ace it 

 are not very frequent. 



There has been much wrangling and contention among linguists con- 

 cerning "incorporation in American languages." Although many of them 

 were agreed as to the facts, and acknowledged also the existence of incor- 

 poration in Basque and other languages of the Eastern hemisphere, the 

 main cause of the strife was this, that every one of the contestants had a 

 definition of the term "incorporation" for himself Lucien Adam regards 

 it as a special sort of polysynthesis,* while others use both terms for the 

 same sort of linguistic structure. D. G. Brinton gives a circumstantial 

 definition of the two,t and considers incorporation as a structural process 

 confined to the verb only. Several recent authors i-efer to "the incorpo- 

 rating languages of America" in a manner likely to induce readers into the 

 belief that all Indian languages of America possess this mode of structure. 

 But of the whole number of from three to five hundred dialects spoken in 

 North, Central, and South America we are acquainted with perhaps one- 

 tenth only ; thus nobody is entitled to include the other nine-tenths, of 

 which we know nothing, into a classification of this sort. At all events, the 

 American languages which have been studied diff'er enormously among each 

 other as to the quality, degree, and extent of their incorporative faculties. 



In the present report I am using the two terms above mentioned in 

 the following sense, to avoid all further misconception : 



Poll/synthesis I regard as an exclusively morphologic term, and mean 

 by it the combination of a radix with one, two, or more elements of a rela- 

 tional or material signification, joined to it to build up words either by 

 inflection or by derivation. 



By incorporation I mean the combination of two or more words exist- 

 ing in the language into one whole, be it a phrase or a sentence, non-predi- 

 cative or predicative, nominal or verbal, by aphaeresis or apocope of the 

 inflectional or derivational affi.xes ; the operation bearing the impress of a 

 S3-ntactic, not of a morphologic process, and producing in the hearer's 

 mind the eff"ect of an inseparable whole or entirety. 



* Preface to his " fitudes siir six langues am^ricaines," Paris, 1878, page vii. 



t On polysynthesis anil incorporation as characteristics of American languages ; Philadeliihi.a, 1885, 

 pages 14, 15 (forms i)art of Transact. Am. Philosnph. Soc, Pliila., vol. xxiii, 48-80). 



