o, augment of the preterit, a tense sign.
ni, pronoun, subject, 1st person.
c, “semi-pronoun,” object, 3d person.
te, “inanimate semi-pronoun,” object, 3d person.
maca, theme of the verb, “to give.”
c, suffix of the preterit, a tense sign.
Here it will be observed that between the tense-signs, which are logically the essential limitations of the action, are included both the agent and the near and remote objects of the action.
In the modifications of meaning they undergo, American verbal themes may be divided into two great classes, either as they express these modifications (1) by suffixes to an unchanging radical, or (2) by internal changes of their radical.
The last mentioned are most characteristic of synthetic tongues. In all pure dialects of the Algonkin the vowel of the verbal root undergoes a peculiar change called “flattening” when the proposition passes from the “positive” to the “suppositive” mood.[[295]] The same principle is strikingly illustrated in the Choctaw language, as the following example will show:[[296]]
takchi, to tie (active, definite).