The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt

Strictly speaking, both the verbal notations here expressed are identical with those already mentioned. Here also the verb is supplied by the mind. The difference is that in the latter case the pronouns alone signify being, and contain this notion in themselves, whereas in the other cases this notion arises from the conjunction of subject and predicate. Then also in the Maya language there is a special pronoun for this sole purpose. As far as the forms go, they entirely resemble those of a true verb, and if que and ten are regarded as mere verbs substantive, one who did not examine their elements would take them to be true verbs like the Sanscrit bhū, the Greek ειμι, and the Latin sum. The example of these languages thus teaches that in the analysis of the substantive verbs of other tongues it is not necessary that a common phonetic radical need be employed.

In the Huasteca language the substantive verb is replaced by affixing a tense sign to the independent pronouns; naua itz, I was, tata itz, thou wert, etc. But the case is not the same. The pronoun receives the verbal power by the suffix itz, and this appears only in later times to have become a sign of the preterit, and in an earlier period to have had a general sense. The mountaineers who seem to have retained the older forms of the tongue use the itz, not only in the preterit, but in the present and future. It was doubtless the expression of some general verbal idea, as, to be, to do, etc.

II.
The notion of Being is incorporated with the verb as an Auxiliary

Auxiliary verbs are used only for certain tenses, or form the entire conjugation. The former arises from accidental causes having relation only to these tenses, not to the verb in general. The latter readily arises when a substantive verb offers an easy means of conjugation by uniting with another verb. Sometimes the conjugation by means of an auxiliary shows that the linguistic sense of a notion sought something beyond the person and tense signs to express the verbal power itself, and therefore had recourse to a general verb. This can, indeed, only be constituted of those elements and a radical; but the want in the language is thus supplied, once for all, and does not return with every verb.

An excellent example of this is furnished by the Maya conjugation. In an analysis of it we find an element that neither belongs to the root, nor is a person, tense or mode sign, and when their varieties and changes are compared, there is evident throughout a marked anxiety to express the peculiar verbal power in the form of the verb.

The conjugation in the Maya language is formed by affixing the pronouns and mode and tense signs to the stem. The pronoun is, according to a distinction to be noted hereafter, either the possessive pronoun or that one which, without verbal power in itself, yet receives it when a predicate is attached to it to form a sentence.

Besides this, the suffix cah accompanies all verbs in the present and imperfect; and the suffix ah accompanies all transitive verbs through the remaining tenses, except the future. Present, 1st person, sing., canan-in-cah, I guard; imperf. 1st pers. sing., canan-in cah cuchi; perf., 1st pers. sing., in canan-t-ah. In is the possessive pronoun, cuchi the sign of the imperfect, t in the perfect is a euphonic letter.

The idea of transitive verbs is here taken somewhat narrower than usual. Only those are included which govern a word outside of themselves. 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.

There are cases where not only the present omits cah, but where the stem, if it ends in ah as is often the case, drops it, and substitutes ic. The signification then alters, and indicates an habitual action or quality. As ic is the sign of the gerund, this change appears to be the transformation of the verb into a verbal, and to effect this, it must be united to that pronoun which serves as the substantive verb; ten yacunic, I love, properly, I am loving (habitually).

What cah and ah mean by themselves, we are not informed. Where cah is attached to the stem of some verbs it signifies intensity. Ah is as a prefix the sign of the male sex, of the inhabitant of a place, and of names derived from active verbs. Hence it seems to have meant at first person, man, and later to have become a pronoun, and finally an affix. It is noteworthy that the same difference exists between ah and cah, as between en and ten. The c may therefore be a radical sound. In the conjugation, cah is treated wholly as a verb. For in this the possessive pronoun is always prefixed; and as in the present and imperfect it is placed after the stem of the verb and before cah, it is evident from the difference between the two forms canan-in-cah and in-canan-t-ah, that in the former cah, and in the latter canan, are regarded as the verbs. Canan-in-cah is precisely as the English “I do guard.”

Cah is consequently a true auxiliary verb; ten, when it appears in conjunction with en must have the notion of Being understood: ah appears to be of similar nature, but as it appears only in the conjugation of transitive verbs, it is a verbal sign, and thus receives its verbal power. That cah and ah do really possess this powever is evident from the fact that they are never used whenever either of the pronouns which are always associated with the notion of Being is present.

Except in the future of transitive verbs, there is no instance in the conjugation where the stem of the verb is not accompanied by one of these four syllables, all of which indicate Being, and all of which have the force of auxiliary verbs.

The future of transitive verbs not only does not take any of these syllables, but even rejects ah when it is the terminal syllable of the stem. In this case no other termination replaces it. On the contrary, all other verbs receive a new suffix in their future, varying as they are of one or many syllables. The nature of these suffixes has not been explained.

The definite results of this analysis are as follows:

1. The Maya language possesses in its conjugation, besides the inflection syllables of the persons and tenses, another element, which, except in the simple future of transitive verbs, distinctly carries with it the notion of Being; in the future of most verbs there is such an element, but of unknown origin, and it only fails in the future of one class of verbs.

2. This language displays an effort to express, besides the other purposes of the verb, particularly its synthetic power, which is all the more apparent as it uses different means in different cases, but all designed to accomplish the same purpose.

The Yaruri language constructs the whole of its conjugation in a yet simpler manner by means of an auxiliary verb.

The union of the pronoun and the tense sign which, as we have already seen, forms the substantive verb, affixed to the stem, completes the inflections of the one and only conjugation of attributive verbs, except that the independent pronouns are prefixed. Neither the stem nor the auxiliary words suffer any changes, except the insertion of an n in one person. The union remains, however, a loose one, and when person and tense are manifest by the connection, the auxiliary verb is omitted. This happens in certain verbs ending in pa. These, contrary to the usual rule, change in the perfect this termination to pea, by which the tense is made apparent, and as the person is evident from the prefixed personal pronoun, the auxiliary can be dropped without danger of obscurity.

The formation of certain tenses by means of auxiliaries is also frequent in American languages.

An optative of this nature in the Lule language has already been mentioned.

In the Mixteca tongue the imperfect is thus formed from the present, which carries with it the personal sign, and the perfect without its personal sign, a proceeding which, however rude and awkward it may be, shows a just appreciation of the peculiarity of this past tense, which expresses an action as going on, and therefore present in past time. The expression of continuous action is placed first, “I sin,” then this is more precisely defined by the mark of past time, “this was so;” Yo-dzatevain-di-ni-cuvui. Yo is the sign of the present, ni of the preterit, di is the pronoun; the other two words, to sin and to be: “I was sinning.”

The sign of the present, yo, is probably an abbreviation of the verb yodzo, I stand upon or over something, and so there is a second auxiliary in the sentence. This may often be a means of discovering the origin of tense signs, as, especially in American tongues, tenses are often formed by the union of verbs, as also occurs in Sanscrit and Greek.

The Othomi distinguishes certain past tenses, which, however, are separated by other characteristics, by a prefixed xa, which is called the third person singular of a substantive verb. As these tenses are precisely those in which the action must be completed, the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect, not, however, the imperfect and past aorist, such a connection is very suitable. Of this verb we have only xa, and there is another substantive verb gui, which itself takes oca in its conjugation.

The Totonaca language unites the perfect, in the person spoken of, with the third person singular of the future of the substantive verb, to form a future perfect. This is no completed form, but only an awkward sequence of two verbs; yc-paxquilh-na-huan, literally, “I have loved, it will be,”=“I shall have loved.”

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.” In the Omagua tongue the same word signifies old, dead, and not present.

In the Maipure and Carib tongues the negative particles ma and spa are also the signs of the preterit. Bopp’s suggestion that the Sanscrit augment was originally a privative finds support in this analogy. Yet I would not speak conclusively on this point, as probably that, the Greek augment ε, and the Mexican o, are only lengthened sounds, intended to represent concretely the length of the past time. At any rate one must regard the negation as an actual destruction, a “been, and no longer being,” not as simply a negation of the present.

III.
The notion of Being is present in the Verbal form only in idea

In this case the verb consists only of the stem, and the person, tense, and mode signs. The former are originally pronouns, the latter particles. Before they are worn down by use to mere affixes, the three following cases may arise:

1. That all three of these elements are equally separable and loosely connected.

2. That one of the two, the person or the tense and mode signs, obtains a closer connection with the stem, and becomes formal, while the other remains loosely attached.

3. That both these are incorporated with the stem, and the whole approaches a true grammatical form, although it does not fully represent it.

Case 1st

The only language I can instance here is that of the Omaguas, as I know no other with such a decided absence of all true grammatical forms in the verb. The independent pronouns, the stem words of the verbs, and the particles of tense and mode are merely placed together without any change, without internal connection, and apparently without fixed order; usu, to go; 1st pers. sing. pres. ta usu; 2d pers. sing. perf. avi ene usu (ene is the pronoun, avi the sign of the perfect). Subjunctive, 1st pers. sing. pres. ta usu mia; 2d pers. sing. perf. avi epe usu mia.

Sometimes, when a misunderstanding is not feared, the verbal stem is employed without these qualifying particles, and cannot then be distinguished from a noun. Paolo amai amano. The last word means “to die,” but grammatically the sentence can as well be rendered, “Paul only die” (i. e. has died), as “Paul only dead.”

It is true that the suffix ta changes nouns to verbs: zhiru, clothes, zhiru-ta, to clothe; but it also changes verbs to nouns, yasai, to cover, yasai-ta, a cover. This may be explained by the theory that this suffix conveys the idea to make, which is taken sometimes actively, sometimes passively.

According to the above, the Omagua conjugation falls in the class where an attributive is united to a pronoun and the verb is omitted; only that here definite tense syllables appear, and this brings the construction nearer to the idea of a conjugation.

Case 2d

1. The Maipure, Abipone, Mbaya and Mocobi languages place only the personal sign in intimate connection with the verb, and allow the tense and mode signs to be loosely attached. They have therefore but one type of personal forms to be applied in every tense and mode by means of the particles or the affixes formed from them. This type, taken alone, usually forms the present; but, accurately speaking, this name cannot be assigned it; because the signs of the other tenses are also dropped when this can be done without obscurity. Ya-chaguani-me-yaladi. Here the first word is in the indefinite form, though it is not the present but the perfect. The me is really the preposition “in;” but usage has adopted it for the subjunctive sign, and so the Spanish grammarians call it; or rather, the verb is considered to be introduced by a conjunction, “if,” “as,” so that it is usually not in the present but a past tense. If this is the case with the last verb, the first one must have the same tense, and so the whole phrase, without any tense sign, means, “I had helped him when I said it.”

One would scarcely expect to find anything like this in cultivated languages. Yet it does occur in both Sanscrit and Greek. The now meaningless particle sma in Sanscrit when it follows the present changes it into a past, and in Greek αν alters the indicative into a subjunctive.

To form this general type, the Maipure makes use of the unchanged possessive pronoun, and treats nouns and verbs in the same manner. The noun must always be united to a possessive pronoun, a trait common to all the Orinoco tongues and many other American languages. In the 3d person sing., however, neither the verb nor the noun has such a pronoun, but it is to be understood; nuani, my son; ani, alone, not son, but “his son.” The 3d pers. sing. of the verb is often the mere stem, without a personal sign, but that this peculiarity should also extend to the noun I have met only in this tongue. It is evident that a pronoun is considered as essential to a noun as to a verb, and although a similar usage is found in many tongues, yet it appears in none so binding. There are, indeed, some nouns which are free from the necessity of thinking them in connection with a person, but these have the suffix ti, which is dropped when the possessive pronoun is added; java ti, a hatchet, nu java, my hatchet. From this it is evident that ti does not belong to the stem, and is incompatible with the use of a possessive, hence it is the sign of the substantive, in its independent condition. The same occurs in Mexican, and the chief termination of substantives, tli, is almost identical in sound with that in the Maipure.

In this respect the verbal, conjugated with the personal signs, differs nothing from the noun united to its possessive pronouns. Grammatically, the form first becomes a verbal one by the added particles of tense and mode. The signification of these can generally be clearly ascertained, and thus are united closely to the stem.

The particles which the language of the Abipones uses to form the general verbal type are quite different from the possessives. The tense and mode particles have elsewhere in the tongue independent meanings. Thus kan, the sign of the perfect, means a thing which has been, time that has past.

In the language of the Mocobis the personal signs consist merely in letters, prefixed and suffixed, and have no apparent relationship to the pronouns. By affixing these letters, phonetic changes take place so that the stem is combined with them into one form.

Among the tense signs, a prefixed l indicates a past time, a suffixed o, the future; but the others are independent particles, loosely attached to the stem.

I have already shown how the Mbaya language conjugates adjectives with the independent pronoun, and participles with the possessive pronoun. The signs used in the conjugation proper of the attributive verb, do not appear elsewhere in the tongue, and must have descended from an older period of its existence.

In the tense and mode signs it is easily perceived how descriptive phrases pass into true forms. For the imperfect and pluperfect the speaker can choose among a number of particles, all of which indicate past time. The modes have definite signs, but these are merely appended, and some have separate significations. The future and perfect have not merely fixed particles, but these are worn down to one letter, so that the stem is actually incorporated with them.

2. In the languages heretofore considered the personal signs added to the word make up the conjugation, and the other signs are attached loosely and externally. The reverse of this, though not perfectly so, appears in the Lule language. The tense and mode signs, often of but one letter, are immediately and firmly attached to the stem, and the pronouns are affixed to this to complete the conjugation. These pronouns are, however, the ordinary possessives, so that noun and verb become in a measure identical; thus, camc means both “I eat” and “my food;” cumuee, “I marry” and “my wife;” only in a few examples are the verbal pronouns distinct from the possessives.

In this case, therefore, the personal signs are independent elements, occurring elsewhere in the language, while the tense and mode signs are true affixes.

The inflection-syllables form with the stem real verbal forms, and so far the conjugation of this language belongs to the third case. But each of the elements has its fixed position, and as soon as one has the key to the combination, he can recognize and separate them at once.

Reasons which it would require too much space to set forth render it probable that all the tense signs are really auxiliary verbs or come from them. This is evident of the optative, as has already been shown. The present only is simple, as it has no tense sign.

Slight differences are found between the personal signs of some tenses, so that these tenses can be distinguished by them, a trait usually seen only in tongues so far cultivated that the grammatical forms have undergone such changes as no longer to present simple and uniform combinations. Equally curious is the regular omission of the tense sign of past time in the third person plural only. Although, except in this case and that of the present, each tense has its definite sign, inserted between the stem and the personal sign, yet there are, besides these, various particles expressing past time, which can accompany the usual tense form, so that there is a double sign of time, one in the word itself and one loosely attached to it.

The languages of the Mbayas, Abipones, Mocobis and Lules are closely allied both in words and in some grammatical forms. It is all the more extraordinary, therefore, to find the last-mentioned pursuing a method in the structure of its verb which is almost totally opposed to that in the other three tongues.

Case 3d

The languages of this class approach in their conjugations those of the more cultivated tongues, in which each verbal inflection has a fixed and independent form. Both the person, the tense and the mode signs are united to the stem, in such a manner that none of the three can be said to be either less or more loosely attached than the others.

All the conjugations about to be discussed lack, however, that fixity of form which grammatically satisfies the mind.

The elements are placed definitely and regularly one by the other, but are not incorporated into each other, and are therefore readily recognizable.

They are found, moreover, outside of the verb elsewhere in the language either without any change or with slight differences of sound; the personal signs as pronouns, the other affixes as particles.

The composition of the verb is separable, and may receive into itself other parts of speech.

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.

I shall discriminate in regard to the conjugations about to be considered that which is an approach toward a fixed form from the intentional separation of the form to insert a governed word.

1. Approach toward a Fixed Form

In the Mixteca language, the personal sign is the unchanged possessive pronoun. If the verb is governed by a noun in the third person, the possessive is dropped. It is left to the speaker to choose whether he designates the person, either by prefixing the personal pronoun or suffixing the possessive. The tense signs are prefixed syllables, but the perfect and future signs are altogether different from those of the present, and materially alter the verbal stem.