Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/212

 1~L> A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. call the adjective cold, Mr. Zeisberger accordingly hesitated, whether, in his Grammar of the Delaware language, he should consider the adjectives as a distinct part of speech ; and he ultimately arranged the greater number of them under the head of verbs adjective. There are however, in every Indian language, some adjectives, or words generally considered as such, which from their nature are not susceptible of a verbal form, or which by usage appear only in that of an adjective. Instances of that kind will be found in Mr. Zeisberger's Onon- dago Grammar. I believe that it must appear sufficiently obvious, that this general if not universal character of the Indian languages, the conversion into verbs and the conjugation, through all the persons, tenses, and moods, of almost all the adjectives and of every noun which, without a palpable absurdity, is susceptible of it, is entirely due to the absence of the substantive verb ; * the idea of which is nevertheless as clear in the mind of the Indian, when he says, I cold, and conjugates the word, as in that of the European, when he says, i I am cold/ and con- jugates the verb / am. The adjective, whether considered as the root, or as one of the forms of the verb, appears nevertheless to have pre- served some of the properties of the noun adjective. A few, in the Choctaw, have a distinct plural form. The feminine gender in the Onondaop, the inanimate or animate in other languages, are distinguished by a varied inflection. The degrees of comparison are in almost every language expressed by words, corresponding to the English more and most, prece- ding or following the adjective. It appears, that in the Onondago language, a distinction is made 1 between the adjectives which may, and those which do not coalesce with the substantive, and that, when thus coales- Chili, is formed by substituting for the termination of the active (in the first person of the present indicative) gen, which he asserts to be the substantive verb sum, es ; and, in another place, that the same termina- tion gen, meaning existence, added to an adjective, makes the noun substantive of abstract qualities, (corresponding- to the English termina- tion ness.) This makes an exception, as to the passive voice, for that language. But the adjectives, substantives, and even proper names are, in the Chilian, as in our Indian languages, converted into intransitive verbs and conjugated without the aid of gen, or of any other analogous auxiliary verb.
 * Father Febre says, that the passive voice, in the language of