As in all polysynthetic languages, other words and particles can be incorporated in the verb to modify its meaning, thus:
| dayahaddáruka, | as I was walking. |
| dayahaddakanika, | I walk a little. |
| dayahaddahittika, | I walk willingly. |
In this way sometimes words of formidable length are manufactured, as:
| massukussukuttunnuanikaebibu, | you should not have been washed to-day. |
Negation may be expressed either by the prefix m or ma, as mayahaddinikade, I do not walk (where the prefix throws the pronoun to the end of the word, and gives it the form appropriate for that position), or else by the adverb kurru, not. But if both these negatives are used, they make an affirmative, as madittinda kurru Gott, I am not unacquainted with God.
COMPOSITION OF WORDS AND SENTENCES.
“In general,” remarks Prof. Von Martius, “this language betrays the poverty and cumbrousness of other South American languages; yet in many expressions a glimpse is caught of a far reaching, ideal background.”[4] We see it in the composition and derivation of some words; from haikan to pass by, comes haikahu death, the passing away, and aiihakü marriage, in which, as in death, the girl is lost to her parents; from kassan to be pregnant, comes kassaku the firmament, big with all things which are, and kassahu behü, the house of the firmament, the sky, the day; from ükkü the heart, comes ükkürahü the family, the tribe, those of one blood, whose hearts beat in unison, and üküahü a person, one whose heart beats and who therefore lives, and also, singularly enough, ükkürahü pus, no doubt from that strange analogy which in so many other aboriginal languages and myths identified the product of suppuration with the semen masculinum, the physiological germ of life.
The syntax of the language is not clearly set forth by any authorities. Adjectives generally, but not always, follow the words they qualify, and prepositions are usually placed after the noun, and often at the end of a sentence; thus, peru (Spanish perro) assimakaku naha à, the dog barks her at. To display more fully the character of the tongue, I shall quote and analyze a verse from the Act Apostelnu, the 11th verse of the 14th chapter, which in the English Protestant version reads:
And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.