tera, name; guera, his name.
Postpositions are in a similar manner sometimes merged into the nouns or pronouns which they limit. Thus: tenonde, before; guenonde, before him.
It appears to me that the substratum, the structural theory, of such a tongue is decidedly polysynthetic and not agglutinative, still less analytic.
Let us now inquire whether there are any signs of the incorporative process in Tupi.
We are at once struck with the peculiarity that there are two special sets of pronouns used with verbals, one set subjective, and the other objective, several of which cannot be employed in any other construction.[[325]] This is almost diagnostic of the holophrastic method of speech. The pronouns in such cases are evidently regarded by the language-faculty as subordinate accessories to the verbal, and whether they are phonetically merged in it or not is a secondary question.
The Tupi pronouns (confining myself to the singular number for the sake of brevity) are as follows:
| Verbal affixes. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent personals. | Possessives. | Subject. | Object. |
| ixe or xe. | se or xe. | a. | xe. |
| inde or ne. | ne or re. | re, yepe. | oro. |
| ae or o. | ae or i. | o. | ae or i. |
The verbal affixes are united to the theme with various phonetic changes, and so intimately as to form one word. The grammars give such example as:—
| areco, I hold; | guereco, they hold him. |
| ahenoi, I call; | xerenoi, they call me. |
| ayaca, I dispute him; | oroaca, I dispute thee. |
In the first person singular, the two pronominal forms xe and a are usually merged in the synthesis xa; as xamehen, I love.