General Discussion
The members of a group of languages called Yuman are spoken in a region comprising a part of the peninsula of Lower California, the southern extreme of California, and the western portion of Arizona. In this group of languages ethnologists have hitherto included that spoken by the Seri Indians and their congeners. But the inclusion of this language rests apparently upon evidence drawn from data insufficient in extent and largely imperfect and doubtful in character. In the following pages this evidence is examined, and the conclusion is reached that it does not warrant the inclusion of the Seri tongue in the Yuman group. The same is true with regard to the Waïkuri (Guaicuri) language, which has been erroneously, it would seem, included in the Yuman stock; for, judging from present available data, it should remain independent until further research shall decide whether it constitutes a stock in itself or belongs to some other stock.
Moreover, it appears that the principle has been disregarded which requires that, in making lexic comparisons to determine the fact and degree of relationship between one language and another, those vocables having admittedly a common linguistic tradition be carefully and systematically studied before they are juxtaposed to those other terms whose kinship with them is still matter for ascertainment. So comparative lists have been prepared in accordance with this principle.
Now, one of the most important things revealed by the study of language is that the course of anthropic linguistic development has been from the use of polysematic demonstratives, or what are called pronominative elements by Professor McGee, toward the evolution and differentiation of parts of speech. These vocables, which occur in all languages, are of prime importance in linguistic research because they are chiefly vestigial in character. Presumptively embodying the indefinite thought-clusters of the anthropoid stage in glottic evolution, they project into the speech of the present (the anthropic stage) an outline or epitome of that earlier pronominative plane of thought and speech development. These pronominative elements represent a complex of ideas, comprising person, place, direction, number, time, mode, gender, sex, and case (or relation). In the Iroquoian tongue the pronominative prefix ra-, “he”, signifies “one person of the anthropic gender, male sex, singular number, nominative case, there, now”. Professor McGee in The “Beginnings of Mathematics,” speaking of the paramount egoistic basis of the thought of primitive men, well says: “They act and think in terms of a dominant personality, always reducible to the Ego, and an Ego drawn so large as to stand for person, place, time, mode of action, and perhaps for raison d’être—it is Self, Here, Now, Thus, and Because.”
Now, there are in nature actions, bodies, properties, and qualities requiring definite expression to give clearness and concision to speech, and this need gradually led to the development and use of conceptual expressions resulting in gradual restriction of the multiplication of, and diminution in the number of, pronominative elements. Speech became specific rather than monophrastic and indefinite, and sought to express individual concepts by terms of definite meaning rather than by phrases involving a plurality of concepts and indefiniteness. The monophrasm or pronominative element expressive of several individual ideas is resolved not by a division of the body of the element, but rather by the addition of elements denotive (though primarily connotive) of action, which had been previously wholly or in part symbolized by the pronominative element, or in part inferred from the situation.
Thus it may be seen that these pronominative elements, miscalled pronouns, are not substitutes for nouns, but that the converse statement is the truer one. These elements have been classed together as forming a part of speech in the same category with the noun and the verb; but it has been seen that the pronominative is not at all a part of speech, involving semantically within itself the distinct concepts of several so-called parts of speech. To make this plain, take from the highly differentiated English tongue the following sentences: “I will give you to her. What can it be? The elk is one of the most timid animals that walk.” In the first, I, you, and her respectively show the relation of the three persons indicated, not only to the act of giving but also to the act of speaking, a function that does not belong to nouns; without change of form they express what is called person, number, case, and sex. And it would be extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to supply the nouns for which what in the second and that in the third are substitutes; for in the last, not even a noun and a conjunction will answer. Such in part are the concepts for which the pronominative elements stand and which give them such great vitality.
Along with these pronominative elements go the numerals, which were primarily the products of a process of cancellation of common factors from original expressions connoting the required number; and so when once the abbreviated expressions became usual there was no disposition to displace them, and increasing use making them more definite, rendered them more and more permanent. This in brief is the chief cause of the obstinate persistency of numerals in all known languages. An examination of the accompanying lists of number-names will greatly aid in understanding what is meant. The late Professor Whitney, when discussing these elements in the Aryan or Indo-European family, uses the following instructive language:
“When, however, we seek for words which are clearly and palpably identical in all or nearly all the branches of the family, we have to resort to certain special classes, as the numerals and the pronouns. The reason of this it is not difficult to point out. For a large portion of the objects, acts, and states, of the names for which our languages are composed, it is comparatively easy to find new designations. They offer numerous salient points for the names-giving faculty to seize upon; the characteristic qualities, the analogies with other things, which suggest and call forth synonymous or nearly synonymous titles, are many. * * * But for the numerals and the pronouns our languages have never shown any disposition to create a synonymy. It was, as we may truly say, no easy task for the linguistic faculty to arrive at a suitable sign for the ideas they convey; and when the sign was once found, it maintained itself thenceforth in use everywhere, without danger of replacement by any other of later coinage. Hence, all the Indo-European nations, however widely they may be separated and however discordant in manners and civilization, count with the same words and use the same personal pronouns in individual address—the same, with the exception, of course, of the changes which phonetic corruption has wrought upon their forms.”[332]
And it is on account of the great vitality and persistency of these two groups of vocables that the pronominative elements and the numerals have been given first place in the comparison between the Seri and the Yuman tongues to determine relationship or want of relationship between the two languages.