THE INDIANS 221 
Whether his enthusiasm is to be fully shared, or whether 
such a view must be taken as going obviously too far, if 
only because the language was conceived by savages, may 
be left for scholars yet to come. 
Superficially, the structure of the language has some 
resemblances to Latin, mainly in its wonderfully inflected 
verb. The noun is little inflected, although it has a certain 
accusative usage. The adjective is put in a verbal form, 
as wapau, “it is white’; hence wapush, “little-white-one”’ 
(rabbit), and wapilao, “white partridge.” Adverbs are 
favoured, and are often placed early in the sentence, as in 
“Quickly I ran.’’ Pronouns are rather fully inflected. 
The particles are wanting. Of the verb it may be said 
that it bears nearly the whole weight of the language. 
The development of this part of speech is extraordinary. 
The Dictionary of Father Lemoine gives three hundred and 
seventy-seven inflections of a single regular verb, and pre- 
sents no less than fifteen conjugations. The number of 
inflections in actual use much exceeds this number. 
The resemblance to Latin is quite close in some of these 
verbal inflections, notably such as the imperfect in -aban 
as compared with -abat in Latin, and the perfect with the 
sharp if, as in the Latin amavit. 
The dual form for we exists, as in the primitive Greek 
and German. A special inflection is observed when the 
subject of the verb is speaking to a person present. The 
number of inflections is nearly doubled by the use of sepa- 
rate forms for animate and inanimate objects, thus: — 
I like the dog — ni shatshitan atum. 
I like the tent — ni shatshiau mitshiuap. 
