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Show HINTS AND EXPLANATIONS. 61 " wind," " snow," or " to drive."# This synthesis which precedes grammar and concentrates complex ideas- thought- clusters- in a single word or syllable, is found in all the American languages ofwhich we have any knowledge. The primary verb affirms conditioned or modified existence, specific and restricted action. There is- I speak now only of that group of languages to which my studies have been chiefly directed, the Algonkin- there is no independent substantive verb; but there are verbs of being under every conceivable condition of time, place, and circumstance. " He is" cannot be exactly translated by any Algonkin verb, but every dialect has verbs signifying " he is well- or ill," " he lives," " he was ( and is not)," " he was ( and continues to be)," " he has himself," " he abides," " he remains," " he is the same as," " he is of the kind of," " ily a," etc. Every standard vocabulary includes the verb " to eat," yet this verb has not, so far as I can discover, its equivalent in any American language. The Algonkin has four or five primary and a great many composite verbs of eating, but none of ttiese expresses the simple act of taking food, without reference to the manner, mode, subject, or object. One verb, for example, signifies " to eat animal food" ( or that which has or has had life); another, " to eat vegetable food;" another," to eat soft food " ( that which may be dipped up, spoon- victuals, such as samp, succotash, and the like); others, " to eat ravenously, to devour like beasts of prey," " to graze," or take food from the ground as cattle do, and so on. Others, again, by the insertion of a particle, or by receiving a characteristic affix, are made to express the act of eating in company with others, of eating enough or satisfying one's self with food, of eating all that is provided, of feasting, etc. No Indian language, probably, has any verb which exactly corresponds to the English verb " to go," yet the Indian verbs of motion are almost numberless. There are verbs of going by land, by water, by paddle, by sail; of going from the speaker, from the place of the action narrated, and from a place other than that of the speaker or the action; of going to a person, place, inanimate object; of going by running, jumping, flying, swimming, etc. ( and these are not to be confounded with the verbs which express the acts of running, jumping, flying, and swimming); of going fast, slow, before, after, aslant, in a straight course, by a devious path; and scores of others. A special vocabulary of the verbs of motion in any Indian language, giving an analysis of each and its precise signification, would be of some real value to philologists; but what is to be gained by entering against the English infinitive " to go," in a standard vocabulary, some one or another of these Indian verbs of going, the entry carrying its own evidence of inaccuracy! The defects of the vocabulary method are still more obvious when we consider the nature of Indian names. A peculiar strength of the English language lies in its concrete general names, and in the facility with which these names are made to pass from the concrete to the abstract. The peculiar excellence of the Indian languages is in the nice machinery by which definitions or descriptions of individual objects are made to stand for names, and by means of which names which in English are general or abstract become individual or concrete. The English abounds with predicates of a class or genus; but the Indian noun- verbum nominale- itself predicates a differentia or an accidens, occasionally a genus or a species. I say the Indian noun predicates, for * Relation de la Nouvoile France en 1' annee 1634 ( rcpr. Quebec, 1658, p. 50). |