II. INDIAN LANGUAGE.
[The following observations are part of a course of lectures on the grammatical structure of the Indian languages, delivered before the St. Mary’s Committee of the Algic Society.—H. R. S.]
I. LECTURES ON THE CHIPPEWA SUBSTANTIVE.
LECTURE I.
Observations on the Ojibwai Substantive. 1. The provision of the language for indicating gender—Its general and comprehensive character—The division of words into animate and inanimate classes. 2. Number—its recondite forms, arising from the terminal vowel in the word. 3. The grammatical forms which indicate possession, and enable the speaker to distinguish the objective person.
Most of the researches which have been directed to the Indian languages, have resulted in elucidating the principles governing the use of the verb, which has been proved to be full and varied in its inflections. Either, less attention has been paid to the other parts of speech, or results less suited to create high expectations of their flexibility and powers, have been attained. The Indian verb has thus been made to stand out, as it were in bold relief as a shield to defects in the substantive and its accessories, and as, in fact, compensating, by its multiform appendages of prefix and suffix—by its tensal, its pronominal, its substantive, its adjective, and its adverbial terminations; for barrenness and rigidity in all other parts of speech. Influenced by this reflection, I shall defer, in the present inquiry, the remarks I intend offering on the verb, until I have considered the substantive, and its more important adjuncts.
Palpable objects, to which the idea of sense strongly attaches, and the actions or condition, which determine the relation of one object to another, are perhaps, the first points to demand attention in the invention of languages. And they have certainly imprinted themselves very strongly, with all their materiality, and with all their local, and exclusive, and personal peculiarities upon the Indian. The noun and the verb not only thus constitute the principal elements of speech, as in all languages; but they continue to perform their first offices, with less direct aid from the auxiliary parts of speech, than would appear to be reconcileable with a clear expression of the circumstances of time and place, number and person, quality and quantity, action and repose, and the other accidents, on which their definite employment depends. But to enable the substantives and attributives to perform these complex offices, they are provided with inflections, and undergo changes and modifications, by which words and phrases become very concrete in their meaning, and are lengthened out to appear formidable to the eye. Hence the polysyllabic, and the descriptive character of the language, so composite in its aspect and in its forms.