SECT. V.] LANGUAGES. 243 



cannot be forced ; dir gives to the word a transitive, ish, a re- 

 ciprocal, me, a negative, signification ; e, indicates impossibi- 

 lity. Nevertheless, according to the opinion of linguists, the 

 poly synthetic languages of America must not be placed in the 

 same class with the agglutinated languages of Asia, as their 

 chief characters greatly differ (Pott). The peculiarity of each 

 of those last mentioned languages, depends on what and how 

 many secondary ideas are incorporated with the chief word, 

 and by what means this is effected (prefixes, infixes, suffixes, 

 changes of sound) ; and finally, what secondary ideas and re- 

 lations remain unexpressed. 



The ideas of action rarely arise in our minds without 

 some definite relations to persons, things, time, place, etc. If 

 these relations are designated by changes in the word itself, by 

 sounds which per se have no definite sense, the language is 

 said to be an inflected language : amabis, loving, with relation 

 to the second person as the subject of action, and the future. 

 This principle of expressing the relations of the chief idea to 

 secondary ideas by changes in the chief word may, in every 

 individual language, be more or less completely carried out, by 

 which a great variety of languages becomes possible, occupy- 

 ingacertain intermediate position between the inflected, agglu- 

 tinated, and poly synthetic (incorporating) languages. Thus 

 many American languages, which Grallatin 1 considered as in- 

 flected languages (which is denied by Pott), have a great 

 number of tense and modes. The Selish has two futures, 

 (I shall, I will), an optative (I should), a reflective, reci- 

 procal modus, a modus of object (I go in order to), etc. The 

 Cherokee has still more. 2 In the Sahaptin languages, nearly 

 every part of speech may be conjugated, "Man," I am a 

 man, thou art a man, etc. ; " over," I am over it, thou art 

 over it, etc. 



We do not pretend to have given a characteristic of the 

 chief types of language ; we merely endeavoured to show, by 

 some striking examples, the great influence of the type of a 





1 " Transactions of the American Ethnological Society," ii, p. 23. 



2 Worcester, in Schoolcraft, " " History of the Indian tribes," ii, p. 446. 



E 2 



