| y | mâhdî | nuny | oqha; |
| he | loves | him | God; |
where we perceive not only synthesis, but the object standing in apposition to the pronoun representing it which is incorporated with the verb.
So: yot-gua, light here; from yotti, to light, nugua, here.
These examples from many given in Neve’s work seem to me to prove beyond cavil that the Othomi exhibits, when properly spoken, precisely the same theories of incorporation and polysynthesis as the other American languages, although undoubtedly its more monosyllabic character and the extreme complexity of its phonetics do not permit of a development of these peculiarities to the same degree as many.
Nor am I alone in this opinion. It has already been announced by the Count de Charencey, as the result of his comparison of this tongue with the Mazahua and Pirinda. “The Othomi,” he writes, “has all the appearance of a language which was at first incorporative, and which, worn down by attrition and linguistic decay, has at length come to simulate a language of juxtaposition.”[[307]]
Some other peculiarities of the language, though not directly bearing on the question, point in the same direction. A certain class of compound verbs are said by Neve to have a possessive declension. Thus, of the two words puengui, he draws, and hiâ, breath, is formed the verb buehiâ, which is conjugated by using the verb in the indefinite third person and inserting the possessives ma, ni, na, my, thy, his; thus,
ybuemahia, I breathe.
ybuenihia, thou breathest.
ybuenahia, he breathes.[[308]]
Literally this would be “it-is-drawing, my breath,” etc.