Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/382

 striking that reduplication as a morphological process occurs extensively on the Great Plains and in the Eastern Woodlands, as well as in that part of the Pacific coast south of the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska. Among the great families of the north it is entirely unknown. Incorporation, which in earlier times was considered as one of the most characteristic traits of American languages, is also confined to certain definite groups. It is characteristically developed in the Shoshoni group, Pawnee, Kutenai, and Iroquois, while north of this region it is either absent in its characteristic form, or only weakly developed. The use of instrumental, which indicate the manner of action as performed with parts of the body, or by other instruments, shows also on the whole a continuous distribution. It is a fundamental trait of Kutenai, Shoshoni, and Sioux, and in all of them it is expressed in a similar manner. The use of true cases and of locative and similar noun forms occurs among the Shoshoni and some of their neighbors, while in other regions it is rather rare. Of even greater importance is the differentiation between nominal and verbal concepts, and between neutral and active verbs, the distribution of which is somewhat irregular.

Although our knowledge of these phenomena is not by any means adequate, it appears fairly clearly that, when the various features are studied in detail, the areas of their distribution do not coincide.

The study of the vocabulary presents similar conditions. It would seem that the number of loan words in American languages is not as great as in European languages. At least, it is difficult to recognize loan words in large numbers. It is, however, striking that the word categories which appear in neighboring languages are sometimes quite similar. This appears, for instance, in the case of terms of relationship. The remarkable extent to which the use of reciprocal terms of relationship is found on the western plateaus, is a characteristic example. It is intelligible that nomenclature and cultural states are closely related, and, therefore, it seems plausible that similarities in underlying categories of vocabularies will occur where cultural conditions are the same or nearly the same.