[351]. In Maya the conjunction “and” is rendered by yetl, a compound of the possessive pronoun, third person singular y, and etl, companion. The Nahuatl, ihuan, is precisely the same in composition.
[352]. “Die meisten amerikanischen Sprachen haben die Eigenthümlichkeit, dass in der Regel die Haupttempora in Auwendung kommen und unter diesen besonders das Präsens, selbst wenn von einer bestimmten, besonders aber von einer unbestimmten Vergangenheit gesprochen wird.” J. J. von Tschudi, Organismus der Khetsua Sprache, s. 189. The same tense is also employed for future occurrences. What classical grammarians call “the historical present,” will illustrate this employment of a single tense for past and future time.
[353]. The Chiquita of Bolivia is an extreme example. “La distinction du passé, du présent et du futur n’existe pas dans cette langue étrange.” Arte y Vocabulario de la Lengua Chiquita. Por. L. Adam, y V. Henry, p. x.
[354]. On the Verb in American Languages. By Wilhelm von Humboldt. Translated by D. G. Brinton, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1885.
[355]. A striking example is the Chiquita of Bolivia. “No se puede en chiquito, ni contar dos, tres, cuatro, etc., ni decir segundo, tercero, etc.” Arte y Vocabulario de la Lengua Chiquita, p. 19 (Paris, 1880).
[356]. Those distinctions, apparently of sex, called by M. Lucien Adam anthropic and metanthropic, arrhenic and metarrhenic, found in certain American tongues, belong to the material, not the formal part of the language, and, strictly speaking, are distinctions not really based on sexual considerations. See Adam, Du Genre dans les Diverses Langues (Paris, 1883).
[357]. Washington Matthews, Grammar and Dictionary of the Language of the Hidatsa (New York, 1873) In a letter received since the first publication of this essay, Dr. Matthews writes that the analysis in the text is quite correct.
[358]. Extract from a paper read before the American Philosophical Society in 1886.
[359]. Linguistic Essays, by Carl Abel, Ph. D. (London, 1882).
[360]. I scarcely need say that I refer to the marvelous words of St. John: ὁ μη αγαπων. ουκ εγνω τον θεον, οτι ὁ θεος αγαπμ εστιν (1 John iv, 8); and to the amor intellectualis, the golden crown of the philosophy of Spinoza as developed in the last book of his Ethica.