The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt / With the Translation of an Unpublished Memoir by Him on the American Verb

by Daniel G. Brinton

The conjugation of this language, therefore, consists of elements not readily analyzed.

The Huasteca language prefixes the possessive pronouns as personal signs. It may also drop them, and use in their stead the independent pronouns; or may combine both; or may use abbreviated personals; so that there is a prevailing arbitrariness in this part of the verbal form.

The tense signs are usually suffixes; but in the future they are prefixes, which are incorporated with the personal sign placed between them and the stem. They consist of simple sounds, of no independent signification. But the particles of the imperative are so separable that when this mode is preceded by an adverb, they attach themselves to it.

The Othomi language does not make use of the possessive pronouns in the conjugation, but suffixes abbreviated forms of the personals, or else prefixes others of special form, but identical in many letters and syllables with the personals. In the present condition of the language the suffixes are used only with the substantive verb; in the attributive verb, however, they may have been driven forward by the governed pronouns suffixed. Every verbal inflection may also take, besides its pronominal prefix, also the unabreviated personal pronoun in front, or the abbreviated one after it.

The tense signs consist principally of single vowels, by means of which the pronominal prefixes are attached to the stem. The imperfect and pluperfect alone have besides this a loosely attached particle. The past tenses possess a prefix, which we have already seen appears to have been derived from an auxiliary verb.

In the third person of some tenses in certain verbs the stem undergoes a change of its initial letters, which appears to transform these inflections into verbal adjectives, an instance of the confusion of the ideas of noun and verb common in all these languages.

The Mexican language possesses a peculiar class of verbal pronouns which form the personal signs. This pronoun is similar to the personal in its consonants, but has a vowel of its own. It is a prefix. The plural is marked by the accent, or by a special termination. This personal sign is inseparable from the verb, but the speaker may also prefix the independent personal pronoun.

The tense signs are all without signification, being single letters or syllables. The perfect is marked not so much by an affix, as by changing, the termination of the verb in various ways, but chiefly by shortening and strengthening the sound. All tense designations are placed at the end of the word, except the augment for past time. If by augment we mean a vowel sound prefixed to the verb in certain tenses in addition to their usual signs, then the Mexican is the only American language which possesses one.

The modes are designated by loosely attached particles, also by a different structure of the tenses, and in the second person a peculiar pronoun.

Thus the Mexican conjugation consists of true verbal forms, not of separate parts of speech of independent significance; but the elements of these forms are easily recognizable, and can be reached without difficulty.