1870.] "0' [Brinton. 



Thvougliout Mr. Bucknev's Avork his division of words is faulty, and 

 adds much to the difficulty of the language. He is much too positive in 

 his views, and his translations are frequently far from literal. His Gram- 

 mar carniot be relied upon as a safe guide in any sense, and while he is de- 

 serving of much credit for his industry in collecting material, the arrange- 

 ment of and the deductions from that material must be condemned. 

 IV. The Muskokee Verb. 



The congugation of a verb in an American language is a prodigious task. 

 In analysing the Muskokee verb I shall avoid as imany complications as 

 possible, and speak only of active verbs, in their first transitions (when 

 the object is presumed to be always in the third person and the singular 

 number), in their first form, and affirmative signification. 



Roots. Muskokee verbs have two roots. The first is fonned by drop- 

 ping the termination etv of the infinitive mood, as nvf ketv, to strike, root 

 nvfk, kicetv, to tell, root kic. The second I'oot is formed by inserting h before 

 the final consonant of the first root, if there is but one consonant ; and by 

 inserting i between the two final consonants if they are two ; and if they 

 are the same, the latter is changed into y ; e. g. 



kicetv 1st root kic 2nd root kihc 



letketv letk -letik 



vkhottetv vkhott vkhotiy 



merretv merr meriy 



Moods. The ordinary form of the Infinitive ends in etv. The sign of 

 the subjunctive is the i^article omat, added after the tense sign. It corres- 

 ponds to, and is probably derived from, the Choctaw subjunctive particle 

 kmvt. The Imperative has a future as well as a present form, correspond- 

 ing in this with most other American languages, and not a rare exception 

 as Buckner thinks. 



Tenses. The imperfect tense has not less than five forms. The first re- 

 fers to something which has transpired to-day, the second to what trans- 

 pired yesterday, the third to an occurrence usually only a few weeks ago, 

 or, as we would say, "lately," the fourth to an action or event long since 

 completed, but within the memory of the speaker, while the fifth imper- 

 fect, called the indefinite or historic tense, refers to transactions of which 

 the subject of the verb has no personal knowledge, nor is directly con- 

 nected with. 



The future tenses are the simple, the compound, and the progressive fu- 

 tures. The progressive futures are formed by adding to the first and second 

 roots the tennination vi-an, and subjoining the tense signs of either past, 

 present, or future tenses. They express the idea of being about to, or having 

 been about to, perfomi an action, and when formed from the fifth imperfect, 

 convey the sense of obligation or necessity. It will thus be seen that both 

 in formation and signification they present a striking analogy to the first 

 and second periphrastic conjugations — those from the participles in rus 

 and dus — in Latin. 



All the above tenses are foi-med from the first root of the verb. The 

 perfect tense, is formed as in Latin, from the second root, by adding to it 

 the tei-minations of the present. 



