170 



APPENDIX. 



stantives and attributives to perform these complex offices, they are pro- 

 vided with inflections, and undergo changes and modifications, by which 

 words and phrases become very concrete in their meaning, and are 

 lengthened out to appear formidable to the eye. Hence the pollysyl- 

 labic, and the descriptive character of the language, so composite in its 

 aspect and in its forms. 



To utter succinctly, and in as few words as possible the prominent 

 ideas resting upon the mind of the speaker, appear to have been the 

 paramount object with the inventors of the language. Hence concen- 

 tration became a leading feature. And the pronoun, the adjective, the 

 adverb and the' preposition, however they may be disjunctively employ- 

 ed in certain cases, are chiefly useful as furnishing materials to the 

 speaker, to be worked up into the complicated texture of the verb and 

 the substantive. Nothing, in fact, can be more unlike, than the lan- 

 guage, viewed in its original, elementary state, — in a vocabulary, for 

 instance, of its primitive words, so far as such a. vocabulary can now be 

 formed, and the same language as heard under its oral, amalgamated 

 form. • Its transpositions may be likened to a picture, in which the copal, 

 the carmine and the. white lead, are no longer recognized as distinct 

 substances, but each of which has contributed its share towards the ef- 

 fect. It is the painter only who possesses the principle, by which one 

 element has been curtailed, another augmented, and all, however seem- 

 ingly discordant, made to coalesce. 



Such a language may be expected to abound in derivatives and com- 

 pounds ; to afford rules for giving verbs substantive, and substantives 

 verbal qualities ; to concentrate the meaning of words upon a lew syl- 

 lables, or upon a single letter, or alphabetical sign ; and to supply modes 

 of contraction and augmentation, and, if I may so say, short cuts, and 

 by paths to meanings, which are equally -novel and interesting. To ar- 

 rive at its primitives, we must pursue an intricate thread, where analogy 

 is often the only guide. We must divest words of those accumulated 

 syllables, or particles, which, like the molecules of material matter, are 

 clustered around the primitives. It is only after a process of this kind, 

 that the principle of combination — that secret wire, which moves the 

 whole machinery can be searched for, with a reasonable prospect of 

 success. The labor of analysis is one of the most interesting and impor- 

 tant, which the subject presents. And it is a labor which it will be ex- 

 pedient to keep constantly in view, until we have separately considered 

 the several parts of speech, and the grammatical laws by which the Ian- 



