Such is the imperfect sketch of my reasons for believing that any statement which places the glossarial differences between the American languages, as ascertained by the simple inspection of their vocabularies, so high as to involve the idea of a unique and unparalleled philological phænomenon is an over-statement.
In thus limiting the extent of a remarkable characteristic I am not denying its existence. That the difference, even when cut down to its proper dimensions, is still more considerable than the usual investigations of philologists prepare them to expect, is shown by the necessity (which I freely admit) of resorting in America to the indirect method of comparison, where in many (perhaps most) other parts of the world, simple collation would suffice.
Why is this? The following facts help us to an answer—fragmentary and partial though it be.
The paucity of general terms.—What shall we say to a language where a term sufficiently general to denote an oak-tree is exceptional; a language where the white-oak has one specific name, the black-oak another, the red-oak a third, and so? Yet such is the ease with the Choctah;[139] where, a fortiori, the still more general name for tree is more exceptional still. This is the case with a noun.
Verbs, however, are equally specialized. Where we in England talk of fishing, the Eskimo has a distinct name for every mode of fishing; and this is only part and parcel of the system which "designates with a peculiar name animals of the same species according to their age, sex, or form."
This is a character, which, though illustrated from two languages, is common to all the American ones.
Now the more specific the name the less extensive its application, and the less extensive its application the smaller the probability of its appearing in more languages than one. No one would expect the word brother to occur in the Gaelic (brathair), and in the Latin (frater), if Gaels, Englishmen, and Romans, without any name for brother in general, had merely known an elder brother by one separate single name, and a younger one by another, as is really the fact in America. What we should look for in such a case would be the equivalents to words like cadet, and these might differ in languages otherwise allied.
Names, then, for common objects are often of so specific a kind in the American languages, that they differ in cases where, if more general, they would agree.
The numerals.—Another class of words, which in many languages agree, differs in the American, viz., that of the numerals. In the Indo-European tongues these agree even where other words differ.[140] The converse, however, takes place with the tongues in question. Languages, alike in other points, shall count differently. Can this be explained? I submit the following doctrine, based upon the difference between absolute numerals like two and three (words which mean two units, and three units exclusively and irrespectively), and concrete numerals like brace and leash.
Between these two classes of words there is the following difference. Absolute numerals give no choice, concrete numerals do. Out of two tribes, wherein the intelligence of each is so little capable of generalization as not to have evolved abstract and absolute numerals like those of the Indo-European nations (one, two, &c.), the only way of counting is by the adoption of some material object in which the number of its parts is a striking characteristic; in which case there is so much room for arbitrary selection that allied languages may take up different words. It is not to be supposed that unless the English, Greeks, Gaels, Slavonians, and the members of the Indo-European stock in general, had broken off from the common stem at a period subsequent to the evolution of absolute numerals that their names for the first ten units would be so like as they are. On the contrary, there would most certainly have been a difference; two being expressed in one quarter by a word like brace, in another by such a term as couple, in a third by pair, and so on. Now this latitude exists and bears fruit with the American languages. One takes the name for (say) two from one natural dualism, another from another—one calls it by the name for a pair of hands, another by that of a pair of feet, a third by that of a pair of shoes, &c.