1. The Maya language possesses in its conjugation, besides the inflection syllables of the persons and tenses, another element, which, except in the simple future of transitive verbs, distinctly carries with it the notion of Being; in the future of most verbs there is such an element, but of unknown origin, and it only fails in the future of one class of verbs.
2. This language displays an effort to express, besides the other purposes of the verb, particularly its synthetic power, which is all the more apparent as it uses different means in different cases, but all designed to accomplish the same purpose.
The Yaruri language constructs the whole of its conjugation in a yet simpler manner by means of an auxiliary verb.
The union of the pronoun and the tense sign which, as we have already seen, forms the substantive verb, affixed to the stem, completes the inflections of the one and only conjugation of attributive verbs, except that the independent pronouns are prefixed. Neither the stem nor the auxiliary words suffer any changes, except the insertion of an n in one person. The union remains, however, a loose one, and when person and tense are manifest by the connection, the auxiliary verb is omitted. This happens in certain verbs ending in pa. These, contrary to the usual rule, change in the perfect this termination to pea, by which the tense is made apparent, and as the person is evident from the prefixed personal pronoun, the auxiliary can be dropped without danger of obscurity.
The formation of certain tenses by means of auxiliaries is also frequent in American languages.
An optative of this nature in the Lule language has already been mentioned.
In the Mixteca tongue the imperfect is thus formed from the present, which carries with it the personal sign, and the perfect without its personal sign, a proceeding which, however rude and awkward it may be, shows a just appreciation of the peculiarity of this past tense, which expresses an action as going on, and therefore present in past time. The expression of continuous action is placed first, “I sin,” then this is more precisely defined by the mark of past time, “this was so;” Yo-dzatevain-di-ni-cuvui. Yo is the sign of the present, ni of the preterit, di is the pronoun; the other two words, to sin and to be: “I was sinning.”
The sign of the present, yo, is probably an abbreviation of the verb yodzo, I stand upon or over something, and so there is a second auxiliary in the sentence. This may often be a means of discovering the origin of tense signs, as, especially in American tongues, tenses are often formed by the union of verbs, as also occurs in Sanscrit and Greek.
The Othomi distinguishes certain past tenses, which, however, are separated by other characteristics, by a prefixed xa, which is called the third person singular of a substantive verb. As these tenses are precisely those in which the action must be completed, the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect, not, however, the imperfect and past aorist, such a connection is very suitable. Of this verb we have only xa, and there is another substantive verb gui, which itself takes oca in its conjugation.
The Totonaca language unites the perfect, in the person spoken of, with the third person singular of the future of the substantive verb, to form a future perfect. This is no completed form, but only an awkward sequence of two verbs; yc-paxquilh-na-huan, literally, “I have loved, it will be,”=“I shall have loved.”