Daniel G. Brinton

“ Each language again bears the relation to language in general that the species does to the genus, or the genus to the order, and by a comprehensive process of analysis he hoped to arrive at those fundamental laws of articulate speech which form the Philosophy of Language, and which, as they are also the laws of human thought, at a certain point coincide, he believed, with those of the Philosophy of History. ”

“ Hence, in Humboldt’s theory the psychological element of self-consciousness lies at the root of all linguistic expression. No mere physical difference between the lower animals and man explains the latter’s possession of articulate speech. His self-consciousness alone is that trait which has rendered such a possession possible.10-†
The idea of Self necessarily implies the idea of Other. A thought is never separate, never isolated, but ever in relation to another thought, suggested by one, leading on to another. Hence, Humboldt says: “The mind can only be conceived as in action, and as action.” ”

“ Formal and Material Elements of Language.
A fundamental distinction in philosophic grammar is that which divides the formal from the material element of speech. This division arises from the original double nature of each radical, as expressing both Being and Action.
On the one hand, Action involves Relation; it assumes an object and a subject, an agent, a direction of effort, a result of effort; usually also limitations of effort, time and space, and qualifications as to the manner of the effort. In other words, Action is capable of increase or decrease both in extension and intension. ”

“ The roots of a language are classified by Humboldt as either objective or subjective, although he considers this far from an exhaustive scheme.11-†
The objective roots are usually descriptive, and indicate an origin from a process of mental analysis. They bear the impress of those two attributes which characterize every thought, Being and Action. Every complete objective word must express these two notions. Upon them are founded the fundamental grammatical categories of the Noun and the Verb; or to speak more accurately, they lead to the distinction of nominal and verbal themes. ”

“ No American language is free from these drawbacks to perfection of form in the conjugations. In some all three are found; in most the first and last. In really grammatically developed tongues, as in the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin and German, none of these imperfections exists. The verb includes in itself no part of its object, the affixes modifying the stem have lost all independent life, and the analysis of the formal elements becomes a difficult philological task, which often fails and only rarely can be fully proved. ”

“ In the Mexican, the infinitive is incorporated in the verb as an accusative, and the verb is put in the future of the person spoken of.
Many writers continue to maintain that a criterion of rank of a language is its lexicographical richness—the number of words it possesses. Even very recently, Prof. Max Müller has applied such a test to American languages, and, finding that one of the Fuegian dialects is reported to have nearly thirty thousand words, he maintains that this is a proof that these savages are a degenerate remnant of some much more highly developed ancestry. ”

“ Moreover, in such case the true and efficient nature of the verb is misunderstood. In the sentence, “The man is good,” the verb is not a synthesis of the adjective “good” with the substantive, but it is a participial of the energic attribute “to be good,” which contains a condition, having beginning, middle and end, and consequently resembles an action. Fully analyzed, the sentence would be, “He is being good.” Where the substantive verb stands without a visible predicate, as in the sentence, “I am,” then the verb “to be” has itself as the object of a synthesis, “I am being.” ”

“ At any rate, this pronoun answers, in the Maya, all the purposes of the substantive verb, and there is no other in the language.
It is quite intelligible that in the conceptions of rude nations the idea of an object, and especially of a person, cannot be separated from the idea of his existence. This may be applied to the forms of expression above mentioned. What seems a violent and ungrammatical omission of the verb, is probably in those people an obscure association of thoughts, a non-separation of the object from its being. ”

“ Adler, in his comments on Humboldt’s philosophy, [11] admirably observes: “Man does not possess any such thing as an absolutely isolated individuality; the ‘I’ and the ‘thou’ are the essential complements of each other, and would, in their last analysis, be found identical.”11-*
On these two fundamental conceptions, those of Identity and Relation, or, as they may be expressed more correctly, those of Being and Action, Humboldt builds his doctrines concerning the primitive radicals of language and the fundamental categories of grammar. ”

“ This examination of the languages whose conjugations approach a fixed form, shows clearly that this fixedness is seriously shaken precisely where it is most important, through this insertion of the governed words.
Now if we reflect on the structure of the various verbal forms here analyzed, certain general conclusions are reached, which are calculated to throw light upon the whole organism of these languages.
The leading and governing part of speech in them is the Pronoun; every subject of discourse is connected with the idea of Personality.
Noun and Verb are not separated ”

“ The tense signs are all without signification, being single letters or syllables. The perfect is marked not so much by an affix, as by changing, the termination of the verb in various ways, but chiefly by shortening and strengthening the sound. All tense designations are placed at the end of the word, except the augment for past time. If by augment we mean a vowel sound prefixed to the verb in certain tenses in addition to their usual signs, then the Mexican is the only American language which possesses one. ”

“ The immediate causes of the improvement of a language through forcible admixture with another, are: that it is obliged to drop all unneccessary accessory elements in a proposition; that the relations of ideas must be expressed by conventional and not significant syllables; and that the limitations of thought imposed [16] by the genius of the language are violently broken down, and the mind is thus given wider play for its faculties. ”

“ In the Lule language the construction with an infinitive is simply that the two verbs follow each other in the same person, as caic tucuec, “I am accustomed to eat,” literally, “I am acustomed, I eat.”
None of these devices fullfils all the uses of the infinitive, and hence they are all inferior to it.
In languages which lack formal elements, the deficiency must be supplied by the mind. Words are merely placed in juxtaposition, and their relationship guessed at. Thus, when a language constructs its cases merely by prefixing prepositions to the unaltered noun, there is no grammatical form ”

“ According to this definition, language is not a dead thing, a completed product, but it is an ever-living, active function, an energy of the soul, which will perish only when intelligence itself, in its highest sense, is extinguished. ”

“ Our first duty in taking up such a grammar as, for instance, that of an American language, is to dismiss the whole of the arrangement of the “parts of speech,” and, by an analysis of words and phrases, to ascertain by what arrangement of elements they express logical, significant relations.19-†
For example, in the Carib tongue, the grammars give aveiridaco as the second person singular, subjunctive imperfect, “if thou wert.” Analyze this, and we discover that a is the possessive pronoun “thy;” veiri is “to be” or “being” (in a place) ”

“ In similar manner the substantive verb is used to form a tense of the subjunctive.
The sign of both the perfects in this tongue is the syllable nit, and niy means “to die.” It is not improbable that this affix is derived from this verb. Death and destruction are suitable ideas to express the past, and some languages employ negative particles as signs of the preterit. In the Tamanaca this is not exactly the case, but the negative particle puni added to a word which signifies an animate thing, intimates that it has died; papa puni, the deceased father, literally, “father not.” ”

“ All others are considered intransitive, even those which of themselves are active, but either have no expressed object (as, I love, I hate, etc.) , or the word which they govern is in the verb itself, as in the Greek οικοδομεο, οικουρεω. As these can govern a second accusative, the object incorporated in the verb is included in the idea they express.
The tenses of the intransitive verbs, except the present and imperfect, while they drop ah and the possessive pronoun, are formed with that pronoun which forms sentences with a predicate. ”

“ One of the most common forms of sentences in American languages is to bring together an adjective and a substantive, the substantive verb being omitted.
Mexican: in Pedro qualli, the Peter (is) good.
Totonaca: aquit chixco, I (am) a man.
Huasteca: naxe uxum ibaua tzichniel, this woman (is) not thy servant.
In the Mixteca language such expressions have a peculiar arrangement. The adjective must precede the substantive, or rather the predicate must precede the subject, as in the reverse case the words are understood separately, and are not connected into a sentence: quadza ñaha, the woman is bad ”

“ We have already seen that in the Maya there is a special pronoun [36] which unites a predicate to the idea of person into one sentence. There is also another which by itself conveys the idea of the verb, and of which each person has the signification both of the pronoun and the substantive verb, “I” and “I am,” “thou” and “thou art,” etc. Not only is it so used in the present, but it can take the signs of the tenses. ”

“ The fact remains that the word is used both as a simple pronoun and also as a substantive verb. In the translation of the Lord’s Prayer, the word toon is a simple pronoun. If t is a radical, it may just as well come from the pronoun. Some languages offer clear examples of this. In the Maipure the expression for the third person singular recurs with all the other persons, as if this sound meant the person, the man generally, and the first and second persons were denoted as the “I-person,” “thou-person,” etc. ”

“ As has been seen, the theory of Incorporation is to express the whole proposition, as nearly as possible, in one word; and what part of it cannot be thus expressed, is left without any syntax whatever. Not only does this apply to individual words in a sentence, but it extends to the various clauses of a compound sentence, such as in Aryan languages show their relation to the leading clauses by means of prepositions, conjunctions and relative pronouns. ”

“ If the higher languages did not develop from the lower, how did they arise? Humboldt answered this question fairly, so far as he was concerned. He said, he did not know. Individuals vary exceedingly in their talent for language, and so do nations. He was willing to call it an innate creative genius which endowed our Aryan forefathers with a richly inflected speech ”

“ An entirely similar instance occurs in the North Guaranay language, which also permits, besides the regular conjugation, a union of the root of the verb with a pronoun, the verb being omitted. The grammarians of that tongue say that this adds extension and emphasis to the sense of the verb. The real difference, however, is that this procedure treats the verb as a noun, and the extension comes from considering the action expressed by the verb to have become a permanent quality; a poro iuca, I kill men (ordinary conjugation) ; xe poro iuca, I (am) a man-killer (form with the possessive pronoun) ”

“ The second advantage is, that when it is desirable to discriminate clearly between the two kinds of verbs, the one which has at base an energic attribute, the other which merely expresses the relation of predicate to subject, a thing to its qualities, this end can be much better reached by the process described than even by the substantive verb, which, by its full verbal form, always recalls the action of an energic attribute. ”

“ If the verb is explained merely as a synthesis of Being with any other attribute, then the origin of the tenses cannot be wholly derived from one idea, for the idea of time alone would allow only a three-fold distinction. ”

“ Nature of Incorporation.
Of the four plans mentioned, Incorporation is that characteristic of, though not confined to, American tongues.
It may appear in a higher or a lower grade, but its intention is everywhere the effort to convey in one word the whole proposition. The Verb, as that part of speech which especially conveys the synthetic action of the mental operation, is that which is selected as the stem of this word-sentence; all the other parts are subordinate accessories, devoid of syntactic value. ”

“ Hence no just division of words can arise, such as is demanded by accurate and appropriate thought, which requires that each word must have a fixed and certain content and a defined grammatical form, and as is also demanded by the highest phonetic laws. ”