Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/215

Rh pronoun in the nominative case is affixed, and in the objective case is prefixed to the verb. In the Choctaw the objective case is always clearly, and in the Muskhogee and Sioux generally, distinguished by its inflection from the nominative. Its position is also always determined in the Choctaw and in the Eskimau.

In the Algonkin-Lenape languages, the two plurals of the pronouns are, as in others, distinguished from the singular and from each other by inflections; the nominative of the personal pronoun connected with the verb is not distinguished from the objective case by its position; and the particles or inflections by which that object is effected, as well as the terminating inflections which denote the two plurals, both in the possessive and the personal pronouns, are separated from the characteristics which distinguish the several persons. These characteristics are prefixed, and the other inflections are affixed, to the verb or to the noun. Both are very similar in the several languages of that family.

Although Mr. Schoolcraft was, in his lectures on the Chippeway, treating specially of the noun and not of the pronoun, the examples he has given of their combination are the most satisfactory that can be selected in reference to the various languages of that family. The exclusive or special plural is that which excludes the person spoken to. The inclusive or indefinite includes that person; and although it has, for that reason, the same characteristic (k) as the second person, they are distinguished from each other by a different termination. It appears that the syllable oom, which is susceptible of the variations âm, aim, im, eem, ôm, and which Mr. Schoolcraft considers as the distinctive sign of the possessive pronoun, is