Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/223

 SECT. VI.] INDIAN LANGUAGES. 187 been seen, that, in the Hebrew, in our modern languages, and in the Choctaw, the pronoun, in the nominative, is always distin- guished from that in the objective case by their relative position. That fundamental and essential principle has been entirely neglected in the Delaware, and probably in all the other languages of the same family. Instead of this, it will be found, that a preference has been given, in the first place, to the second, and in the next to the first person. When the second person occurs in the transition, whether in the nominative, or in the objective case, we find its characteristic k placed before the verb. Whenever the transition is from the first to the third, or from the third to the first person, the n, characteristic of the first is, in like manner, placed before the verb, whether that person be the agent, or the object of the action. When the action passes from one third to another third person, its initial characteristic w is placed before the verb, or is omitted altogether.* It thence follows, that the termination, placed after the root of the verb, must perform the various offices of distinguishing, which of the two pronouns is in the nominative or objective case ; whether both, or, if only one, which of the two is in the plural ; and, whenever the second is one of the persons concerned, that is to say in sixteen cases out of twenty- eight, whether the other pronoun is of the first or third person. To distinguish with precision all the various combinations, resulting from those several offices, requires twenty-eight dis- tinct, different terminations for each tense. The Choctaw requires but twelve, in the same manner as, in English, twelve words are sufficient in order to effect the same purpose ; and these run regularly through all the tenses and moods of the verb; whilst numerous discrepancies are found in that respect in the Delaware. The comparative simplicity of the Hebrew, of the English, and of the Choctaw rests on three principles, neither of which has been observed in the Delaware ; the regular relative posi- tion assigned to the pronouns in the nominative and objective case ; the distinct designation by which the objective is always distinguished from the nominative case of the pronoun ; and a tfmilgneen, ' they give to us,' in which the k designates the indefinite plu- ral. But the rule may be considered as general. No exception to it is found in the paradigms of the Massachusetts conjugations in Eliot's Grammar.
 * There are a few anomalies, some only in appearance, such as