ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 53 



deciding, for the subjunctive form is rapidly becoming ob- 

 solete with a long list of paradigmatic forms which have 

 disappeared. 



Every time the pronoun he, she, or it is used it is necessary 

 to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use 

 there is no reason why sex should be expressed say one time 

 in ten thousand. If one pronoun non-expressive of gender 

 were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, 

 then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases 

 the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of an unnec- 

 essary thought and in the one case an adjective would fully 

 express it. But when these inflections are greatly multiplied, 

 as they are in the Indian languages, alike with the Greek 

 and Latin, the speaker is compelled in the choice of a word 

 to express his idea to think of a multiplicity of things which 

 have no connection with that which he wishes to express. 



A Ponca Indian, in saying that a man killed a rabbit, 

 would have to say the man, he, one, animate, standing, in 

 the nominative case, purposely killed, by shooting an arrow, 

 the rabbit, he, the one, animate, sitting, in the objective 

 case ; for the form of a verb to kill would have to be se- 

 lected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and in- 

 corporated particles to denote person, number, and gender 

 as animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or 

 lying, and case ; and the form of the verb would also ex- 

 press whether the killing was done accidentally or pur- 

 posely, and whether it was by shooting or by some other 

 process, and, if by shooting, whether by bow and arrow, or 

 with a gun ; and the form of the verb would in like man- 

 ner have to express all of these things relating to the ob- 

 ject ; that is, the person, number, gender, and case of the 

 object ; and from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms of 

 the verb to kill this particular one would have to be se- 

 lected. Perhaps one time in a million it would be the pur- 

 pose to express all of these particulars, and in that case the 

 Indian .would have the whole expression in one compact 

 word, but in the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand 



