Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/213

 SECT. VI.] INDIAN LANGUAGES. 177 cing, the adjective invariably becomes a verb : eniage, ' hand ' ; ostwi, ' little ' ; eniastwi, ' a little hand ' ; wageniastwi, ' my hand is little' ; saniastwi, 'thy hand is little' ; honiastwi, 'his hand is little.' It will be perceived that, in this instance, the conjugation can he carried through all the tenses and moods, but only in the third person ; the variations of hand and hands, and of my, thy, his, our, belonging properly, the first to the noun and the other to the pronoun. The notions of time belong properly to the action and not to the object, to the verb and not to the nouns. Yet we find, con- trary to the universal usage amongst our own languages, in- flections, in those of the Indians, of nouns and adjectives denoting time, both in the past and future tenses. Mr. School- craft has given instances of it in the Chippeway, where the termination, bun, added to a noun proper, indicates that the person has ceased to exist. But the most numerous exam- ples, applying both to adjectives and to substantives, are found in Father Maynard's Notes on the Micmac. It may be, that this peculiarity is due to the verbal form, so easily assumed by nouns of every description. This process of conversion is reciprocal. Verbs, in almost all the Indian languages, may by a small varied inflexion be converted into nouns. Both verbs and adjectives become substantives in the Chippeway, by adding to them the termina- tion win. The same result is obtained in the Delaware by the termination gan, and in the language of Chili by that of gen. This termination appears, in the three languages, to be princi- pally used for the purpose of forming abstract nouns expressive of qualities. Thus are derived, in the Chilian, cumegen, ' good- ness,' from cume, 'good'; in the Delaware, ivulissowagan, 'prettiness,' hom wulisso, 'pretty'; in the Chippeway, minwai- dumowin, 'happiness,' from minwaindum, 'he (is) happy.' Of Pronouns. Nouns substantive are often and the verbs are always em- bodied, the first with the possessive, the other with the per- sonal pronouns, so as to form in each case respectively but a single word. And this union of the verb includes the pronoun not only in its nominative case, or as agent or subject of the vol. ii. 23