of the subject and of the object of love, a pure abstraction; the expressions my father, thy father, I love thee, &c., must have preceded the invention of the verbs, nouns, and pronouns, in their respective insulated forms. This might be true of pure relative nouns, such as, father; and we find some reasons for thinking that it was so, in Father Brebeuf's letter and in the manner in which Mr. Heckewelder answered Mr. Du Ponceau's inquiry on that point. The question might be doubtful with respect to some verbs. But it seems that distinct words, designating the first and second persons of the pronoun must have been amongst the first which were wanted and therefore invented by man. At first, proper names alone would be used. Adam and Eve did not stand in need of pronouns. Children, who begin to speak, generally designate themselves at first by the names given to them, and only after a while substitute the pronoun I. But, as it became impossible to designate every individual by a distinct proper name, the great convenience, if not the absolute necessity, of words designating the person speaking and that spoken to, must have soon become apparent, and have produced the invention of such words, which, when used in the singular number, have also the great advantage of precision. And we may here take notice of one of the distinguishing general features of the Indian languages, and such a one as we might have expected to find in them.

It must have been the primary object of every language to designate with precision every object and every action, and every modification of which every object or action was susceptible. Specific names would naturally precede generic terms; and, if the Indian languages are often deficient in these, they abound in distinct names for every particular species of tree, for every variety of age, sex, or peculiarity, in certain species of animals, and in degrees of consanguinity, and generally for those subdivisions of the same genus, which in our languages are distinguished by attributes which qualify the generic term. Thus, instead of designating the several species of oak by the names of white oak, black oak, swamp oak, &c., the Indians have a distinct name for every species, and, in many languages, no generic term, embracing all the species of oak.*

And

* There are some exceptions; and even these show the gradual progress of language. Uppě, in Choctaw, means trunk or stalk, and is often used, in compound words, for tree. An acorn is nussě; all oaks bear acorns; Nussuppě (the acorn tree) is the Choctaw word for the oak.

instead of discriminating brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, &c., by the attributes 'elder,' 'younger,' ' paternal,' ' maternal,' &c., they have also distinct names, which have no affinity with those expressive of those qualifications, for elder brother,' 'younger brother,' 'paternal uncle,' 'maternal uncle,' &c. In the same manner, when passing, in the pronouns of the two first persons, from the singular to the plural, instead of designating this by a general, indefinite expression, the Indians have all resorted to a dual, or to a specific definite plural; and, in some languages, they have carefully distinguished the several species of dual, and given distinct names to each species, in the Cherokee and Iroquois, for instance, to thou and I, you two, &c. The apparent confusion in the third person, the want of a word for it in some languages, and its occasional omission in others, may be traced to the same cause; not to a want of precision, but to the tendency to avoid whatever was not definite and precise. The pronoun of that person is in its nature vague and indefinite, a relative, the proper use of which depends on the structure of the sentence and the skill of the speaker or writer. If, in the Choctaw language, tokchě equally means, to tie,' he ties,' 'he ties him,' and 'tie him'; and if okla tokche means both 'he ties them' and they tie him,' it is because, in fact, the pronouns he, him, they, them, are not to be found in the language. The proper names of the persons, whether subject or object of the action, are used instead of a vague pronoun, 'John ties Peter,' instead of he ties him.' And when at last the necessity of a general plural expression was on certain occasions felt, the word okla, which means 'a multitude of men,' 'a people,' a nation,' was adopted as a substitute for the pronoun which was wanted. The third person singular of the verb is accordingly, in several Indian languages, its root, or simplest form.

In many languages of the other continent, the process by which the pronoun was incorporated with the verb has reached its last stage. Thus, in the Latin, where it has not been adopted with respect either to the possessive or to the objective case of the personal pronoun, but only in the combination. of the nominative case of that pronoun with the verb, there does not remain the slightest trace of affinity between the terminations s and t, which, in the active voice of all the verbs, are the signs of the second and third person singular respectively, and the separable pronouns of those two persons. Those

and other similar terminations, in their present shape, appear and are considered as inflections of the verb. It is quite otherwise in the Indian languages. In all of them, whether in the combination of the possessive pronoun with the noun, or in both the simple and compound conjugations, the separable pronoun and its inflections, though generally in an abbreviated form, are still visible; and the possessive pronoun in one case, and the personal pronoun in the other, are almost always nearly identical. There are undoubtedly some exceptions, such as the first personal singular in the Choctaw, and the plural termination of the second person in the Delaware; and the division of the pronoun into two parts, in the Algonkin-Lenape languages, has rendered the affinity less immediately obvious. But there is no language, or dialect, in which there are not still evident traces of the original pronouns, and of which it may not be asserted, that in all the combinations alluded to, the inflections of number and person are those of the pronoun, and neither of the noun or verb. There is accordingly but little difficulty in the declensions, if they may be so called, of the noun and possessive pronoun combined, or in the simple conjugations which involve with the verb only the subject of the action, or nominative case of the pronoun, provided the variations of which the pronoun is susceptible be previously understood.

It has been already mentioned that, in the Sioux language, the plural sign pee is applicable to every part of speech; and that, in the Cherokee, the corresponding sign te is used for the purpose of designating the plural of the objective case of the personal pronouns. In several of the languages, such as the Algonkin-Lenape, the plural is formed by adding a termination to the singular of the pronoun. There are some in which that plural, especially in the first and second person, is not an inflection, but a distinct word having no affinity with the singular. We find the same feature in many European languages: ego, nos; tu, vos; I, we; thou, you; &c.

Transitions.

The complex compound conjugations consist in the amalgamation of the verb with the pronoun, both in its nominative case, or as agent, and in its objective case, or as the object of

the action. As the passing of the action, from the agent to the object in which it terminates, is thus expressed by a single word, the Spanish authors of Indian grammars have designated that species of conjugation by the name of transition. It is common to all the Indian languages, which have been investigated. But, although the character is common to all, the principle does not belong exclusively to them. That, which in that respect characterizes them, is the manner in which the principle has been applied, and which, varying greatly in the different languages, has in some of them been the cause of those countless inflections, which at first excited the wonder of European philologists. Every Hebrew student knows that these transitions exist in that language, and in a form so simple, as not to cause him any great embarrassment. They are founded on the same principle as in the Indian languages. Abbreviations of the inseparable pronouns become respectively, pronouns possessive by being added as terminations to the noun, and the objective case of the personal pronoun by being in the same manner added to the verb. Other distinct abbreviations represent the nominative case of the same pronoun; and as, in the compound conjugation, the abbreviated form of the pronoun in the objective case always follows that in the nominative case, and there are also distinctive variations between the singular and the plural of each, the whole process unites precision with simplicity. It differs no otherwise from the conjugation in the English language, so far as pronouns are concerned, than in the collocation of the pronoun, and in the pronunciation in one word instead of three. They say, lovlthee, in one word, instead of I love thee in three words; and the number of inflections, or combinations of inflections, required for the purpose, is the same with that of the words, which we use in order to attain the same object, (1, thou, me, thee, we, us, &c.)

The system is nearly the same in the Choctaw. The following table exhibits the pronouns, personal separable in the first column; united with verbs in the nominative case in the second; possessive united with the nouns designating the parts of the body, and used also (as in Hebrew) as the objective case, when united with verbs.

All the pronouns, in the nominative case, precede the verb, excepting ille, which is a termination. The rule applies equally to the simple conjugation and to the transitions. All the pronouns, in the objective case, are placed, in the transitions, immediately before the verb and therefore immediately after the pronoun in the nominative, with the exception always of the first person in the nominative, which is still a termination: tokch, 'he ties'; tokchill, 'I tie'; ishtokch, thou tiest,' &c. Suttokch, he ties me'; chittokchill, 'I tie thee'; ishpittokch, 'thou tiest us'; (exc. pl.), &c.

Those two rules constitute the whole system of the Choctaw transitions in the paradigm of the verb tokche, 'to tie,' and equally apply to all the tenses and moods, passive voice, and negative form; all these being each distinguished by the insertion of its characteristic particle, but without interfering, otherwise than by their respective collocation, with the pronominal inflections. It is not stated, whether there is more than one conjugation; and, where this depends solely on the inflections of the pronoun, it may well happen that, with some anomalies, there is but one. Such is found to be the case in the language of Chili, where the system of transitions, though somewhat more complex, is governed by uniform rules and attains a precision nearly equal to that of the Choctaw. The pronouns, in the nominative and objective cases, are placed in the Choctaw in the same order as in the French. The English say, thou tiest me; the French and the Choctaw, tu me lies, thou me tiest.

A peculiarity in that language deserves notice. An inserted particle, ull, denotes the passive voice; but the personal pronoun, instead of being as in our languages in the nominative, is in the Choctaw in the objective case. Instead of saying, 'I (am) tied,' 'tullokchille,' they say, 'me (am) tied,' suttullokche.' The same rule applies to all those intransitive verbs which we