OV LANGUAGES. 



n 



The complications which arise in this classification are 

 plainly visible in the intricacies of American languages. 

 Dr. Schoolcraft 124 furnishes us with an interesting description 

 of them. 



"Ina general survey of the language as it is spoken, and as 

 it must be written, there is perhaps no feature which obtrudes 

 itself so constantly to view, as .the principle which separates all 

 words, of whatever denomination, into animates and inanimates, 

 as they are applied to objects in the animal, vegetable, or 

 mineral kingdom. This principle has been grafted upon most 

 words, and carries its distinctions throughout the syntax. It is 

 the gender of the language, but a gender of so unbounded a 

 scope as to merge in it the common distinctions of a masculine 

 and feminine, and to give a twofold character to the 

 parts of speech. It will be sufficient here to observe that 

 animate nouns require animate verbs for their nominatives, 

 animate adjectives to express their qualities, and animate 

 demonstrative pronouns to mark the distinctions of person. 125 

 Nouns animate embrace the tribes of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, 

 reptiles, Crustacea, the sun, and moon, and stars, thunder and 

 lightning ; for they are personified. In the vegetable kingdom 

 their number is comparatively limited, being chiefly confined to 

 trees, and those only, while they are referred to as whole bodies, 

 and to the various species of fruits, seeds, and esculents. It is 

 at the option of the speaker to employ nouns either as animates 

 or inanimates ; but it is a choice never resorted to, except in 



(124) See : Information respecting the history, condition and prospects of 

 the Indian tribes of the United States, by Harry R. Schoolcraft, ll.d., 

 Part II, page 365fL Compare also H. H. Bancroft's Native Races of the 

 Pacific States of N.A., Vol. Ill, page 720, 732, 745, 766 and 777 ; according 

 to Mr. Bancroft there exist in the Tarasco language three kinds of nouns, 

 rational, irrational and inanimate. 



(125) L.c, pages 433, ff. Sang to love, Ne sang eau, I love a person. "The 

 term eau is made to carry the various senses of person, being, life, man, in a 

 variety of compound phrases. Its epicene character permits it to be applied 

 not only to men, without relation to sexuality, but to all the classes of quad- 

 rupeds, birds, fishes, and whatever is invested with the properties of life or 

 being. On the contrary, what does not belong to this class of vital objects 

 „ ... is denoted by the long sound of ee or simple e.' ' 



