Page:A vocabulary of the Yoruba language (IA vocabularyofyoru00crow).pdf/14

( 2 ) Failing, however, those analogies which would enable us to connect the Yoruba with its kindred dialects, and so, by direct inference, to lay down its position amongst the languages of Africa, we may still, from the very want of those analogies, come at a negative conclusion, and exclude it from one and another of those ethnological families whose characteristic features are prominent and defined, and so perhaps eventually, after a series of exclusions, arrive at a satisfactory result, from which there will be no escaping. But at present our knowledge of African philology is so scanty, that it were utterly impossible to continue our negative process so far. The utmost that I can attempt in the remarks I now have to offer is to lay the foundation of this series of exclusions, thus marking out one or two of the grand families of the Hamitie stock, to which the Yoruba cannot be referred, and in this manner limiting to some extent the area over which we must search for its affinities. The first peculiarity of the Yoruba language to which 1 shall refer, is, the complete and regular system of prefixes by which substantives are formed. This is a prominent feature in the language, and renders it susceptible of increase to an indefinite extent. The original idea contained in the simple verb may be modified in a variety of ways, and carried through numerous relations, without periphrasis, by the mere addition of prefixes, in such a regular system that it is scarcely possible to mistake the meaning of the compound. 1. We have first the radical word, expressing the simple idea of acting or suffering; as SE, "do;" FE, "love;"

VO, "know;" Lo, "go."

2. The idea contained in this radical word assumes a substantive form, in which it expresses abstractedly the action denoted by the verb, by taking the prefix i;