Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/233

 SECT. VI.] INDIAN LANGUAGES. 197 multiplied inflections are in every instance reducible to rules, subject to more or less exceptions, according as the plan has in its progress become more or less complex. Many of these exceptions may be traced to euphony, and become also subject to the rules which it imposes. One instance will be given, which will explain the apparent anomalies of some of the Delaware inflections. It seems that the surd or vocal sound belonging to the ab- breviated pronouns, and which Mr. Heckewelder expresses by an apostrophe, (n ¥, w or ne, Ice, we; in Chippeway ni, lei, o,) is essential to them, or cannot coalesce with a vowel. Whenever therefore a vowel is the first letter of a verb, the expletive consonant d is inserted between the characteristic of the pronoun and the verb. The rule does not apply to the sound u or o, but extends to the cases where the verb begins with I. Achpin, c to stay' ; rfdappi, Wdappi, ' I stay,' 'thou stayest.' Aan, Mo go ' ; vUda, Wda, he. Ahoalan, t to love ' ; n'dahoala, Wdahoala, he. Lis sin, 'to be so ' ; rfdelsi, he. Lauchsin ' to live ' ; nh- lauchsin, he. Lucn, ' to say ' ; n'dellowe, he. But wulamalsi makes n'u/amalsi, and walhaton makes vlq- halton. The rule appears to extend to the Chippeway. Ishlcodai, ' fire ' ; ni efo'shkdaim, ' my fire ' ; ossin, ' a stone ' ; nin rfossineen, ' my stone ' ; ais, 'a shell'; nin dasm, 'my shell.' (Schoolcraft.) But there are exceptions; os, ' father'; nosj ' my father,' and not ni dos. The various means adopted by the several Indian nations in order to effect the same object, that of concentrating in a single word the two pronouns and the verb, and the different character which the first steps once taken have impressed on the several languages respectively, seem to deserve attention, inasmuch as the investigation may throw some light on the his- tory of the formation of languages. It must be admitted that the cumbersome apparatus, with which, in order to attain such a simple object, some of those languages have been overwhelmed, is calculated to excite wonder rather than admiration. Their system of transitions, with its multiplied inflections, appears to me to be the most defective part of the Algonkin-Lenape Ian-