24 
In Eskimo there is a diftereiitiatioii between “ one, 
ways, in ij^sKimo mere is a anieronuauuu uulwcch uhc, two, 
and “many,” i.e., a dual number as in ancient Greek; but very fre- 
quently a distinction between the collective and the distributive, 
between “all” and “each,” or between “some” and “many,” takes 
the place of singular and plural. Again, instead of a sharp dis- 
tinction between present, past, and future time, tense may be based 
on such categories as the “ beginning ” or “ duration ^ of an action, 
its “ momentary ” or “ continuous ” character, or on the “ transi- 
tion ” from one state to another. These and other differences have 
probably deterred many philologists from studying the Indian lan- 
guages, and help to explain our imperfect knowledge of some of 
them to-day. 
However much they may vary in structure one from another, 
nearly all the Canadian languages possess one feature in common, 
the elaborate employment of affixes preceding and following the 
stem. Infixes are rare — only Siouan and Nootka make use of them 
— but most languages employ both prefixes and suffixes. In Eskimo 
there is only one prefix, a syllable fa used with certain pronominal 
place stems; but there are something like three hundred suffixes 
which may be combined with one another in bewildering variety to 
produce words of ten, fifteen, and even twenty syllables. These 
suffixes (together with prefixes in other languages) supply the need 
of several parts of speech and permit a whole sentence to be em- 
braced within a single word. Thus, from the word igdlo: “ house,” 
a West Greenland Eskimo can produce the following and many other 
forms : ^ 
igdlorssuaq : a large house; 
igdlorssualiorpoq: he builds a large house; 
iqdlorss’ualiorfik: the place where a large house is being built; 
igdlorssualiorfilik : one who has a place where a large house is 
being built ; 
igdloTssualiortugssarsiuinavoq : he wants to find a man who can 
build a large house. 
Numerous affixes of this nature, easily combined with one 
another, give the Indian languages great flexibility and enable them 
to overcome many deficiencies in their vocabularies. It has often 
1 Taken from Ritik, IT.; “ Tlie Eskimo Tribes”; Meddelelser om Gr0nland, vol. xi, p, 48 (0)pen~ 
hagen, 1887J. 
