The only language I can instance here is that of the Omaguas, as I know no other with such a decided absence of all true grammatical forms in the verb. The independent pronouns, the stem words of the verbs, and the particles of tense and mode are merely placed together without any change, without internal connection, and apparently without fixed order; usu, to go; 1st pers. sing. pres. ta usu; 2d pers. sing. perf. avi ene usu (ene is the pronoun, avi the sign of the perfect). Subjunctive, 1st pers. sing. pres. ta usu mia; 2d pers. sing. perf. avi epe usu mia.
Sometimes, when a misunderstanding is not feared, the verbal stem is employed without these qualifying particles, and cannot then be distinguished from a noun. Paolo amai amano. The last word means “to die,” but grammatically the sentence can as well be rendered, “Paul only die” (i. e. has died), as “Paul only dead.”
It is true that the suffix ta changes nouns to verbs: zhiru, clothes, zhiru-ta, to clothe; but it also changes verbs to nouns, yasai, to cover, yasai-ta, a cover. This may be explained by the theory that this suffix conveys the idea to make, which is taken sometimes actively, sometimes passively.
According to the above, the Omagua conjugation falls in the class where an attributive is united to a pronoun and the verb is omitted; only that here definite tense syllables appear, and this brings the construction nearer to the idea of a conjugation.
Case 2d.
1. The Maipure, Abipone, Mbaya and Mocobi languages place only the personal sign in intimate connection with the verb, and allow the tense and mode signs to be loosely attached. They have therefore but one type of personal forms to be applied in every tense and mode by means of the particles or the affixes formed from them. This type, taken alone, usually forms the present; but, accurately speaking, this name cannot be assigned it; because the signs of the other tenses are also dropped when this can be done without obscurity. Ya-chaguani-me-yaladi. Here the first word is in the indefinite form, though it is not the present but the perfect. The me is really the preposition “in;” but usage has adopted it for the subjunctive sign, and so the Spanish grammarians call it; or rather, the verb is considered to be introduced by a conjunction, “if,” “as,” so that it is usually not in the present but a past tense. If this is the case with the last verb, the first one must have the same tense, and so the whole phrase, without any tense sign, means, “I had helped him when I said it.”
One would scarcely expect to find anything like this in cultivated languages. Yet it does occur in both Sanscrit and Greek. The now meaningless particle sma in Sanscrit when it follows the present changes it into a past, and in Greek αν alters the indicative into a subjunctive.
To form this general type, the Maipure makes use of the unchanged possessive pronoun, and treats nouns and verbs in the same manner. The noun must always be united to a possessive pronoun, a trait common to all the Orinoco tongues and many other American languages. In the 3d person sing., however, neither the verb nor the noun has such a pronoun, but it is to be understood; nuani, my son; ani, alone, not son, but “his son.” The 3d pers. sing. of the verb is often the mere stem, without a personal sign, but that this peculiarity should also extend to the noun I have met only in this tongue. It is evident that a pronoun is considered as essential to a noun as to a verb, and although a similar usage is found in many tongues, yet it appears in none so binding. There are, indeed, some nouns which are free from the necessity of thinking them in connection with a person, but these have the suffix ti, which is dropped when the possessive pronoun is added; java ti, a hatchet, nu java, my hatchet. From this it is evident that ti does not belong to the stem, and is incompatible with the use of a possessive, hence it is the sign of the substantive, in its independent condition. The same occurs in Mexican, and the chief termination of substantives, tli, is almost identical in sound with that in the Maipure.
In this respect the verbal, conjugated with the personal signs, differs nothing from the noun united to its possessive pronouns. Grammatically, the form first becomes a verbal one by the added particles of tense and mode. The signification of these can generally be clearly ascertained, and thus are united closely to the stem.
The particles which the language of the Abipones uses to form the general verbal type are quite different from the possessives. The tense and mode particles have elsewhere in the tongue independent meanings. Thus kan, the sign of the perfect, means a thing which has been, time that has past.