PART IV. LINGUISTIC. (continued 2)

di ûn-ba magetzi,

He will give-them heaven.

In this sentence, di is the personal pronoun combined with the future sign; and the verb is ûn-ni, to give to another, which is compounded with the personal ba, them, drops its final syllable, forming a true synthesis.

In the phrase,

xpi ûn-ba hma magetzi,

he had give them (had) heaven,

371both subject and object, the latter inclosed in a synthesis with the radical of the theme, the former phonetically altered and coalesced with a tense particle, are included in the double tense-sign, x-hma. This is as real an example of incorporation as can be found in any American language.

Ordinary synthesis of words, other than verbs, is by no means rare in Othomi. Simple juxtaposition, which Naxera states to be the rule, is not all universal. Such a statement by him leads us to suspect that he had only that elementary knowledge of the tongue which Neve refers to in a forcible passage in his Reglas. He writes: “A good share of the difficulty of this tongue lies in its custom of syncope; and because the tyros who make use of it do not syncopate it, their compositions are so rough and lacking in harmony to the ears of the natives that the latter count their talk as no better than that of horse-jockeys, as we would say.”^[306]

The extent of this syncopation is occasionally to such a degree that only a fragment of the original word is retained. As:

The charcoal-vendor, na māthiâ.

Here na is a demonstrative particle like the Aztec in, and māthiâ is a compound pà, to sell, and thêhñâ, charcoal.

The expression,

y mahny oqha, he loves God,

is to be analyzed,

372

y mâhdî nuny oqha;

he loves him God;

where we perceive not only synthesis, but the object standing in apposition to the pronoun representing it which is incorporated with the verb.

So: yot-gua, light here; from yotti, to light, nugua, here.

These examples from many given in Neve’s work seem to me to prove beyond cavil that the Othomi exhibits, when properly spoken, precisely the same theories of incorporation and polysynthesis as the other American languages, although undoubtedly its more monosyllabic character and the extreme complexity of its phonetics do not permit of a development of these peculiarities to the same degree as many.

Nor am I alone in this opinion. It has already been announced by the Count de Charencey, as the result of his comparison of this tongue with the Mazahua and Pirinda. “The Othomi,” he writes, “has all the appearance of a language which was at first incorporative, and which, worn down by attrition and linguistic decay, has at length come to simulate a language of juxtaposition.”^[307]

Some other peculiarities of the language, though not directly bearing on the question, point in the same direction. A certain class of compound verbs are said by Neve to have a possessive declension. Thus, of the two words puengui, he draws, and hiâ, breath, is formed the verb buehiâ, which is conjugated by using the verb in the indefinite third person 373and inserting the possessives ma, ni, na, my, thy, his; thus,

ybuemahia, I breathe.

ybuenihia, thou breathest.

ybuenahia, he breathes.^[308]

Literally this would be “it-is-drawing, my breath,” etc.

In the Mazahua dialects there is a remarkable change in the objective conjugations (transitions) where the whole form of the verb appears to alter. In this language ti = I; ki or khe = thou.

I give, ti une.

I give thee, ti dakke.

He will give us, ti yakme.^[309]

The last example is not fully explained by my authorities; but it shows the verbal change.

Something like this occurs in the Pame dialects. They reveal a manifest indifference to the integrity of the theme, characteristic of polysynthetic languages. Thus, our only authority on the Pame, Father Juan Guadalupe Soriano, gives the preterit forms of the verb “to aid:”

Ku pait, I aided.

Ki gait, thou aidedest.

Ku mait, he aided.

So, of “to burn:”

Knu aum, I burned.

Kuddu du taum, they burned.^[310]

A large number of such changes run through the conjugation. 374Pimentel calls them phonetic changes, but they are certainly, in some instances, true syntheses.

All these traits of the Othomi and its related dialects serve to place them unquestionably within the general plan of structure of American languages.

THE BRI-BRI LANGUAGE.

The late Mr. Wm. M. Gabb, who was the first to furnish any satisfactory information about it and its allied dialects in Costa Rica, introduces the Bri-Bri language, spoken in the highlands of that State, by quoting the words of Alexander von Humboldt to the effect that “a multiplicity of tenses characterizes the rudest American languages.” On this, Mr. Gabb comments: “This certainly does not apply to the Costa Rican family, which is equally remarkable for the simplicity of its inflections.”^[311]

This statement, offered with such confidence, has been accepted and passed on without close examination by several unusually careful linguists. Thus Professor Friedrich Müller, in his brief description of the Bri-Bri (taken exclusively from Gabb’s work), inserts the observation—“The simple structure of this idiom is sufficient to contradict the theories generally received about American languages.”^[312] And M. Lucien Adam has lately instanced its verbs as notable examples of inflectional simplicity.^[313] The 375study of this group of tongues becomes, therefore, of peculiar importance to my present topic.

Since Mr. Gabb published his memoir, some independent material, grammatical as well as lexicographical, has been furnished by the Rt. Rev. B. A. Thiel, Bishop of Costa Rica,^[314] and I have obtained, in addition, several MS. vocabularies and notes on the language prepared by Prof. P. J. J. Valentini and others.

The stock is divided into three groups of related dialects, as follows:—

I. The Brunka, Bronka or Boruca, now in southwestern Costa Rica, but believed by Gabb to have been the earliest of the stock to occupy the soil, and to have been crowded out by later arrivals.

II. The Tiribi and Terraba, principally on the head-waters of the Rio Telorio and south of the mountains.

III. The Bri-Bri and Cabecar on the head-waters of the Rio Tiliri. The Biceitas (Vizeitas) or Cachis, near the mouth of the same stream, are off-shoots of the Bri-Bris; so also are the small tribes at Orosi and Tucurrique, who were removed to those localities by the Spaniards.

The Bri-Bri and Cabecar, although dialects of the same original speech, are not sufficiently alike to be mutually intelligible. The Cabecars occupied the land before the Bri-Bris, but were conquered and are now subject to them. It is probable that their dialect is more archaic.

The Bri-Bri is a language of extreme poverty, and as 376spoken at present is plainly corrupt. Gabb estimates the whole number of words it contains as probably not exceeding fifteen hundred. Some of these, though Gabb thinks not very many, are borrowed from the Spanish; but it is significant, that among them is the pronoun “that,” the Spanish ese.

Let us now examine the Bri-Bri verb, said to be so singularly simple. We are at once struck by Mr. Gabb’s remark (just after he has been speaking of their unparalleled simplicity) that the inflections he gives “have been verified with as much care as the difficulties of the case would admit.” Evidently, then, there were difficulties. What they are, becomes apparent when we attempt to analyze the forms of the eighteen brief paradigms which he gives.

The personal pronouns are

je, I. sa, we.

be, thou. ha, you.

ye, he, etc. ye-pa, they.

These are both nominative and objective, personal and, with the suffix cha, possessives.

The tenses are usually, not always, indicated by suffixes to the theme; but these vary, and no rule is given for them, nor is it stated whether the same theme can be used with them all. Thus,

To burn, ĭ-norka, present, i-nyor-ket-ke.

To cook, i-lu’. “ ĭ-luk.

To start, i-be-te. “ i-be-te.

Here are three forms for the present, not explained. Are they three conjugations, or do they express three shades of meaning, like the three English presents? I suspect the 377latter, for under ikiana, to want, Gabb remarks that the form in -etke, means “he wants you,” i. e., is emphatic.

The past aorist has two terminations, one in -na, and one in -e, about the uses and meanings of which we are left equally in the dark.

The future is utterly inexplicable. Even Prof. Müller, just after his note calling attention to the “great simplicity” of the tongue, is obliged to give up this tense with the observation, “the structural laws regulating the formation of the future are still in obscurity!” Was it not somewhat premature to dwell on the simplicity of a tongue whose simplest tenses he acknowledges himself unable to analyze?

The futures of some verbs will reveal the difficulties of this tense:—

To burn, i-nyor-ka; future, i-nyor-wane-ka.

To cook, i-lu’; ” i-lu’.

To start, i-bete; ” i-bete.

To want, i-ki-ana; ” i-kie.

To count, ishtaung; ” mia shta’we.

In the last example mia is the future of the verb imia, to go, and is used as an auxiliary.

The explanation I have to suggest for these varying forms is, either that they represent in fact that very “multiplicity of tense-formations” which Humboldt alluded to, and which were too subtle to be apprehended by Mr. Gabb within the time he devoted to the study of the language; or that they are in modern Bri-Bri, which I have shown is noticeably corrupted, survivals of these formations, but are now largely disregarded by the natives themselves.

Signs of the incorporative plan are not wanting in the 378tongue. Thus in the objective conjugation not only is the object placed between subject and verb, but the latter may undergo visible synthetic changes. Thus:

Je be sueng.

I thee see.

Ke je be wai su-na.

Not I thee (?) see-did.

In the latter sentence na is the sign of the past aorist, and the verb in synthesis with it drops its last syllable. The wai Gabb could not explain. It will be noticed that the negative precedes the whole verbal form, thus indicating that it is treated as a collective idea (holophrastically).

Prepositions always appear as suffixes to nouns, which, in composition, may suffer elision. This is strictly similar to the Nahuatl and other synthetic tongues.

Other examples of developed synthesis are not uncommon, as—

away, imibak, from imia to go, jebak, already.

very hot, palina, from ba + ilinia.

The opinion that the Bri-Bri is at present a considerably corrupted and worn-down dialect of a group of originally highly synthetic tongues is borne out by an examination of the scanty materials we have of its nearest relations.

Thus in the Terraba we find the same superfluous richness of pronominal forms which occurs in many South American tongues, one indicating that the person is sitting, another that he is standing, a third that he is walking.^[315]

The Brunka has several distinct forms in the present tense:

I eat, cha adeh, and atqui chan (atqui = I).

379Although Bishop Thiel supplies a number of verbal forms from this dialect, the plan of their construction is not obvious. This is seen from a comparison of the present and perfect tenses in various words. The pronouns are—

⅓ atqui, I.

ique, he.

For instance:

Brunka Verbal Forms.

To kill (radical, ai).

Present, I kill, cha atqui i aíra.

Perfect, he has killed, iang i aíc.

To die (radical, cojt).

Present, I die, cójo drah.

Perfect, he has died, cojt crah.

To hear (radical, dój).

Present, I hear, aari dój ograh.

Perfect, I have heard, aqui dój crah.

To forget.

Present, I forget, asqui chita uringera.

Perfect, I have forgotten, ochita uringea.

These examples are sufficient to show that the Brunka conjugations are neither regular nor simple, and such is the emphatic statement of Bishop Thiel, both of it and all these allied dialects. In his introduction he states that he is not yet ready to offer a grammar of these tongues, though well supplied with lexicographical materials, and that “their verbs are especially difficult.”^[316]

380The Cabecar dialect, in which he gives several native funeral poems, without translations, is apparently more complicated than the Bri-Bri. The words of the songs are long and seem much syncopated.

THE TUPI-GUARANI DIALECTS.

Several writers of the highest position have asserted that these dialects, spoken over so large a portion of the territory of Brazil, are neither polysynthetic nor incorporative. Thus the late Prof. Charles F. Hartt in his “Notes on the Lingoa Geral or Modern Tupi,” expressed himself: “Unlike the North American Indian tongues, the languages of the Tupi-Guarani family are not polysynthetic in structure.”^[317] With scarcely less positiveness Professor Fredrich Müller writes: “The objective conjugation of the Tupi-Guarani does not show the incorporation usually seen in American languages, but rather a mere collocation.”^[318]

It is, I acknowledge, somewhat hazardous to venture an opinion contrary to such excellent authorities. But I must say, that while, no doubt, the Tupi in its structure differs widely from the Algonkin or Nahuatl, it yet seems to present unmistakable signs of an incorporative and polysynthetic character, such as would be difficult to parallel outside of America.

I am encouraged to maintain this by the recent example of the erudite Dr. Amaro Cavalcanti, himself well and practically 381versed in the spoken Tupi of to-day, who has issued a learned treatise to prove that “the Brazilian dialects present undoubtedly all the supposed characteristics of an agglutinative language, and belong to the same group as the numerous other dialects or tongues of America.”^[319] Dr. Cavalcanti does not, indeed, distinguish so clearly between agglutinative and incorporative languages as I should wish, but the trend of his work is altogether parallel to the arguments I am about to advance.

Fortunately, we do not suffer from a lack of materials to study the Tupi, ancient and modern. There are plenty of dictionaries, grammars and texts in it, and even an “Ollendorff’s Method,” for those who prefer that intellectual (!) system.^[320]

All recent writers agree that the modern Tupi has been materially changed by long contact with the whites. The traders and missionaries have exerted a disintegrating effect on its ancient forms, to some of which I shall have occasion to refer.

O Selvagem i Curso da Lingua Geral. By Dr. Couto de Magalhaes (Rio de Janeiro, 1876).

382Turning our attention first to its synthetic character, one cannot but be surprised after reading Prof. Hartt’s opinion above quoted to find him a few pages later introducing us to the following example of “word-building of a more than usually polysynthetic character.”^[321]

akáyu, head; ayú, bad.

akayayú, crazy.

muakayayu, to seduce (make crazy).

xayumuakayayú, I make myself crazy, etc.

Such examples, however, are not rare, as may be seen by turning over the leaves of Montoya’s Tesoro de la Lengua Guarani. The most noticeable and most American peculiarity of such compounds is that they are not collocations of words, as are the agglutinative compounds of the Ural-Altaic tongues, but of particles and phonetic elements which have no separate life in the language.

Father Montoya calls special attention to this in the first words of his Advertencia to his Tesoro. He says:—“The foundation of this language consists of particles which frequently have no meaning if taken alone; but when compounded with the whole or parts of others (for they cut them up a great deal in composition) they form significant expressions; for this reason there are no independent verbs in the language, as they are built up of these particles with nouns or pronouns. Thus, ñemboé is composed of the three particles ñe, mo, e. The ñe is reciprocal; mo an active particle; e indicates skill; and the whole means ‘to exercise oneself,’ which we translate, ‘to learn,’ or ‘to teach,’ indeterminately; but with the personal sign added, anemboe, ‘I learn.’”

383This analysis, which Montoya carries much further, reminds us forcibly of the extraordinarily acute analysis of the Cree (Algonkin) by Mr. James Howse.^[322] Undoubtedly the two tongues have been built up from significant particles (not words) in the same manner.

Some of these particles convey a peculiar turn to the whole sentence, difficult to express in our tongues. Thus the element é attached to the last syllable of a compound gives an oppositive sense to the whole expression; for example, ajur, “I come” simply; but if the question follows: “Who ordered you to come?” the answer might be, ajuré, “I come of my own accord; nobody ordered me.”^[323]

Cavalcanti observes that many of these formative elements which existed in the old Tupi have now fallen out of use.^[324] This is one of several evidences of a change in structure in the language, a loss of its more pliable and creative powers.

This synthesis is also displayed in the Tupi, as in the Cree, by the inseparable union of certain nouns with pronouns. The latter are constantly united with terms of consanguinity and generally with those of members of the body, the form of the noun undergoing material modifications. Thus:

tete, body; cete, his body; xerete, my body.

tuba, father; oguba, his father; xerub, my father.

mymbaba, domestic animal; gueymba, his domestic animal.

tera, name; guera, his name.

384Postpositions are in a similar manner sometimes merged into the nouns or pronouns which they limit. Thus: tenonde, before; guenonde, before him.

It appears to me that the substratum, the structural theory, of such a tongue is decidedly polysynthetic and not agglutinative, still less analytic.

Let us now inquire whether there are any signs of the incorporative process in Tupi.

We are at once struck with the peculiarity that there are two special sets of pronouns used with verbals, one set subjective, and the other objective, several of which cannot be employed in any other construction.^[325] This is almost diagnostic of the holophrastic method of speech. The pronouns in such cases are evidently regarded by the language-faculty as subordinate accessories to the verbal, and whether they are phonetically merged in it or not is a secondary question.

The Tupi pronouns (confining myself to the singular number for the sake of brevity) are as follows:

Verbal affixes.

Independent personals. Possessives. Subject. Object.

ixe or xe. se or xe. a. xe.

inde or ne. ne or re. re, yepe. oro.

ae or o. ae or i. o. ae or i.

The verbal affixes are united to the theme with various phonetic changes, and so intimately as to form one word. The grammars give such example as:—

areco, I hold; guereco, they hold him.

ahenoi, I call; xerenoi, they call me.

ayaca, I dispute him; oroaca, I dispute thee.

385In the first person singular, the two pronominal forms xe and a are usually merged in the synthesis xa; as xamehen, I love.

Another feature pointing to the incorporative plan is the location of the object. The rule in the old language was to place the object in all instances before the verb, that is, between the verb and its subject when the latter was other than a personal suffix. Dr. Cavalcanti says that this is now in a measure changed, so that when the object is of the third person it is placed after the verb, although in the first and second persons the old rule still holds good.^[326] Thus the ancient Tupis would say:

boia aè o-sou,

snake him he-bites.

But in the modern tongue it is:

boia o-sou aé

snake he-bites him.

With the other persons the rule is still for the object to precede and to be attached to the theme:

xeoroinca, I thee kill.

xepeinca, I you kill.

xeincayepe, me killest thou.

Many highly complex verbal forms seem to me to illustrate a close incorporative tendency. Let us analyze for instance the word,

xeremimboe,

which means “him whom I teach” or “that which I teach.” Its theme is the verbal mboe, which in the extract 386I have above made from Montoya is shown to be a synthesis of the three elementary particles ñe, mo, and e; xe is the possessive form of the personal pronoun, “my”; it is followed by the participial expression temi or tembi, which, according to Montoya, is equivalent to “illud quod facio;” its terminal vowel is syncopated with the relative y or i, “him, it”; so the separate parts of the expression are:—

xe + tembi + y + ñe + mo + e.

I shall not pursue the examination of the Tupi further. It were, of course, easy to multiply examples. But I am willing to leave the case as it stands, and to ask linguists whether, in view of the above, it was not a premature judgment that pronounced it a tongue neither polysynthetic nor incorporative.

THE MUTSUN.

This is also one of the languages which has been announced as “neither polysynthetic nor incorporative,” and the construction of its verb as “simple to the last degree.”^[327]

We know the tongue only through the Grammar and Phrase-Book of Father de la Cuesta, who acknowledges himself to be very imperfectly acquainted with it.^[328] With its associated dialects, it was spoken near the site of the present city of San Francisco, California.

387Looking first at the verb, its “extreme simplicity” is not so apparent as the statements about it would lead us to expect.

In the first place, the naked verbal theme undergoes a variety of changes by insertion and suffixes, like those of the Quiche and Qquichua, which modify its meaning. Thus:

Ara, to give.

Arsa, to give to many, or to give much.

Arapu, to give to oneself.

Arasi, to order to give, etc., etc.

Again:

Oio, to catch.

Oiñi, to come to catch.

Oimu, to catch another, etc.

The author enumerates thirty-one forms thus derived from each verb, some conjugated like it, some irregularly. With regard to tenses, he gives eight preterits and four futures; and it cannot be said that they are formed simply by adding adverbs of time, as the theme itself takes a different form in several of them, aran, aras, aragts, etc. In the reflexive conjugation the pronoun follows the verb and is united with it: As,

aragneca, I give myself,

where ca is a suffixed form of can, I; ne represents nenissia, oneself; the g is apparently a connective; and the theme is ara. This is quite in the order of the polysynthetic theory and is also incorporative.

Such syntheses are prominent in imperative forms. Thus from the above-mentioned verb, oio, to catch, we have,

388oiomityuts, Gather thou for me,

in which mit is apparently the second person men, with a postposition tsa, mintsa; while yuts is a verbal fragment from yuyuts, which the author explains to mean “to set about,” or “to get done.” This imperative, therefore, is a verbal noun in synthesis with an interjection, “get done with thy gathering.” It is a marked case of polysynthesis. A number of such are found in the Mutsun phrases given, as:

Rugemitithsyuts cannis, Give me arrows.

In this compound cannis, is for can + huas, me + for; yuts is the imperative interjection for yuyuts; the remainder of the word is not clear. The phrase is given elsewhere

Rugemitit, Give (thou) me arrows.

Without going further into this language, of which we know so little, it will be evident that it is very far from simple, and that it is certainly highly synthetic in various features.

CONCLUSIONS.

The conclusions to which the above study leads may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. The structural processes of incorporation and polysynthesis are much more influential elements in the morphology of language than has been conceded by some recent writers.

2. They are clearly apparent in a number of American languages where their presence has been heretofore denied.

3. Although so long as we are without the means of examining all American tongues, it will be premature to assert that these processes prevail in all, nevertheless it is safe to say 389that their absence has not been demonstrated in any of which we have sufficient and authentic material on which to base a decision.

4. The opinion of Duponceau and Humboldt, therefore, that these processes belong to the ground-plan of American languages, and are their leading characteristics, must still be regarded as a correct generalization.

[ADDENDUM.

Critique by M. Lucien Adam on the above.

Shortly after the above essay appeared in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, its arguments and conclusions were vigorously attacked by M. Lucien Adam in the Revue de Linguistique et de Philologie Comparée, Tome XIX (Paris, 1886). He begins by pointing out that examples of incorporation may be found in tongues of the Old World—which has never been denied (see above, pp. 353–4). Having acknowledged the incompleteness of his own definitions, he intimates that those I give are calculated rather to sustain my theory than to prove a linguistic trait. He then proceeds to lengthy and minute criticisms of the analyses I have made of the examples given under the several languages discussed. I am quite willing to concede that with the imperfect grammars and lexicons of these tongues so far published, I may have tripped at times in such analyses; but I am far from acknowledging that all those of M. Adam are correct, and I am quite certain that in some he is mistaken. The question, however, is one not possible to discuss in this place, and I must leave it; but I would refer the earnest student to the acute and learned article of M. Adam, which is much the most thorough yet written on the negative side of the debate.]

390

THE EARLIEST FORM OF HUMAN SPEECH, AS REVEALED BY AMERICAN TONGUES.^[329]

Archæologists tell us that the manufacturers of those rude stone implements called palæoliths wandered up and down the world while a period of something like two hundred thousand years was unrolling its eventless centuries. Many believe that these early artisans had not the power of articulate expression to convey their emotions or ideas; if such they had, they were confined to inarticulate grunts and cries.

Haeckel proposed for the species at this period of its existence the designation Homo alalus, speechless man. Anatomists have come forward to show that the inferior maxillary bones disinterred in the caves of La Naulette and Schipka are so formed that their original possessors could not have had the power of articulation.^[330] But the latest investigators of this point have reached an opposite conclusion.^[331] We must, however, concede that the oral communication 391of men during that long epoch was of a very rudimentary character; it is contrary to every theory of intellectual evolution to suppose that they possessed a speech approaching anything near even the lowest organized of the linguistic stocks now in existence. By an attentive consideration of some of these lowest stocks, can we not form a somewhat correct conception of what was the character of the rudimentary utterances of the race? I think we can, but, as I believe I am the first to attempt such a picture, I offer it with becoming diffidence.

The physiological possibility that palæolithic man possessed a language has, as I have said, been already vindicated; and that he was intellectually capable of speech could, I think, scarcely be denied by any one who will contemplate the conceptions of symmetry, the technical skill, and the wise adaptation to use, manifested in some of the oldest specimens of his art; as for example the axes disinterred from the ancient strata of San Isidro, near Madrid, those found forty feet deep in the post-glacial gravels near Trenton, New Jersey, or some of those figured by De Mortillet as derived from the beds of the Somme in France.^[332] We have evidence that at that period man made use of fire; that he raised shelters to protect himself from the weather; that he possessed some means of navigating the streams; that he could occasionally overcome powerful and ferocious beasts; that he already paid some attention to ornamenting his person; that he lived in communities; and that his migrations were extensive.^[333] 392In view of all this, is it not highly improbable that he was destitute of any vocal powers of expressing his plans and desires? I maintain that we should dismiss the Homo alalus, as a scientific romance which has served its time.

More than this, I believe that by a judicious study of existing languages, especially those which have suffered little by admixture or by distant removals, we can picture with reasonable fidelity the character of the earliest tongues spoken by man, the speech of the Palæolithic Age.

This primitive utterance was, of course, not the same everywhere. It varied indefinitely. But for all that it is almost certain that in all localities it proceeded on analogous lines of development, just as languages have everywhere and at all times since. By studying simple and isolated languages, those which have suffered least by contact with others, or by alterations in conditions of culture, we can catch some glimpses of the character of man’s earliest significant expression, the “baby-talk of the race,” if I may use the expression. I have gleaned a certain number of such traits in the field of American linguistics, and present them to you as curiosities, which, like other curiosities, have considerable significance to those who will master their full purport.

The question I am about to consider, is, you will observe, quite different from that which concerns itself with the origin of linguistic stocks. Many of these unquestionably arose long after man had acquired well-developed languages, 393and when the cerebral convolutions whose activity is manifested in articulate expression had acquired a high grade of development through hereditary training. How such stocks may have arisen has been lucidly set forth by my learned friend Mr. Horatio Hale. He demonstrates by many examples that in the present cerebral evolution of man, infants develop an articulate language with the same natural facility that any other species of animal does the vocal utterances peculiar to its kind.^[334]

But in this essay I am contemplating man as he was before hundreds of generations of speaking ancestors had evolved such cerebral powers.

I begin with some observations on the phonetic elements. These are no other than what we call the alphabet, the simple sounds which combined together make up the words of a language. In all European tongues, the mere letters of the alphabet, by themselves, have no meaning and convey no idea; furthermore, their value in a word is fixed; and, thirdly, arranged in a word, they are sufficient to convey its sound and sense to one acquainted with their values.

Judged by certain American examples, all three of these seemingly fundamental characteristics of the phonetic elements were absent in primitive speech, and have become stable only by a long process of growth. We find tongues in which the primary sounds are themselves significant, and yet at the same time are highly variable; and we find many examples in which they are inadequate to convey the sense of the articulate sound.

394As exemplifying these peculiarities I take the Tinné or Athapascan, spoken widely in British America, and of which the Apache and Navaho in the United States are branches. You know that in English the vowels A, E, I, O, U, and the consonants, as such, F, S, K, and the others, convey to your mind no meaning, are not attached to any idea or train of ideas. This is altogether different in the Tinné. We are informed by Bishop Faraud,^[335] a thorough master of that tongue, that its significant radicals are the five primitive vowel sounds, A, E, I, O, U. Of these A expresses matter, E existence, I force or energy, O existence doubtful, and U existence absent, non-existence, negation or succession. These vowels are “put in action,” as he phrases it, by single or double consonants, “which have more or less value in proportion as the vowel is more or less strong.” These consonantal sounds, as we learn at length from the works on this language by Father Petitot, are also materially significant. They are numerous, being sixty-three in all, and are divided into nine different classes, each of which conveys a series of related or associated ideas in the native mind.

Thus, the labials express the ideas of time and space, as age, length, distance, and also whiteness, the last mentioned, perhaps, through association with the white hair of age, or the endless snowfields of their winter. The dentals express all that relates to force terminating, hence uselessness, inanity, privation, smallness, feebleness; and also greatness, elevation, the motor power. The nasals convey the general notion of motion in repetition; hence, rotation, reduplication, gravitation, and, by a singularly 395logical association, organic life. The gutturals indicate motion in curves; hence, sinuousness, flexibility, ebullition, roundness, and by a linear figure different from that which underlies the Latin rectitudo, justness, correctness. The H, either as an aspirate or an hiatus, introduces the ideas of command and subjection, elevation and prostration, and the like.^[336]

You will observe that in some of these cases the signification of a sound includes both a notion and its opposite, as greatness and smallness. This is an interesting feature, to which I shall refer later.

Turn now to another language, the Cree. Geographically it is contiguous to the Tinné; but, says Bishop Faraud, who spoke them both fluently, they resemble each other no more than the French does the Chinese. Nevertheless, we discover this same peculiarity of materially significant phonetic elements. Howse, in his Cree Grammar, observes that the guttural K and the labial W constitute the essential part of all intensive terms in that language, “whether the same be attributive, formative, or personal accident.” Indeed, he maintains that the articulate sounds of the Cree all express relative powers, feebleness or force, independent of their position with reference to other sounds.

You may inquire whether in the different groups of American tongues the same or a similar signification is attached to any one sound, or to the sounds of any one organ. If it were so, it would give countenance to those theories which maintain that there is some fixed relation between sound and sense in the radicals of languages. I must reply that I have 396found very little evidence for this theory; and yet some. For example, the N sound expresses the notion of the ego, of myself-ness, in a great many tongues, far apart geographically and linguistically. It is found at the basis of the personal pronoun of the first person and of the words for man in numerous dialects in North and South America. Again, the K sound is almost as widely associated with the ideas of otherness, and is at the base of the personal pronoun of the second person singular and of the expressions for superhuman personalities, the divine existence.^[337] It is essentially demonstrative in its power.

Again, in a long array of tongues in various parts of the world, the subjective relation is expressed by the M sound, as has been pointed out by Dr. Winkler; and other examples could be added. Many of these it is impossible to attribute to derivation from a common source. Some writers maintain that sounds have a subjective and fixed relation to ideas; others call such coincidences “blind chance,” but these should remember that chance itself means merely the action of laws not yet discovered.

You might suppose that this distinction, I mean that between self and other, between I, thou and he, is fundamental, that speech could not proceed without it. You would be mistaken. American languages furnish conclusive evidence that for unnumbered generations mankind got along well enough without any such discrimination. One 397and the same monosyllable served for all three persons and both numbers. The meaning of this monosyllable was undoubtedly “any living human being.” Only after a long time did it become differentiated by the addition of locative particles into the notions, “I—living human being,” “Thou—living human being,” “He—living human being,” and so on. Even a language spoken by so cultured a people as the ancient Peruvians bears unmistakable traces of this process, as has been shown by Von Tschudi in his admirable analysis of that tongue; and the language of the Baures of Bolivia still presents examples of verbs conjugated without pronouns or pronominal affixes.^[338]

The extraordinary development of the pronouns in many American languages—some have as many as eighteen different forms, as the person is contemplated as standing, lying, in motion, at rest, alone, in company, etc., etc.—this multiplicity of forms, I say, is proof to the scientific linguist that these tongues have but recently developed this grammatical category. Wherever we find overgrowth, the soil is new and the crop rank.

In spite of the significance attached to the phonetic elements, they are, in many American languages, singularly vague and fluctuating. If in English we were to pronounce 398three words, loll, nor, roll, indifferently as one or the other, you see what violence we should do to the theory of our alphabet. Yet analogous examples are constant in many American languages. Their consonants are “alternating,” in large groups, their vowels “permutable.” M. Petitot calls this phenomenon “literal affinity,” and shows that in the Tinné it takes place not only between consonants of the same group, the labials for instance, but of different groups, as labials with dentals, and dentals with nasals. These differences are not merely dialectic; they are found in the same village, the same family, the same person. They are not peculiar to the Tinné; they recur in the Klamath. Dr. Behrendt was puzzled with them in the Chapanec. “No other language,” he writes, “has left me in such doubt as this one. The same person pronounces the same word differently; and when his attention is called to it, will insist that it is the same. Thus, for devil he will give Tixambi and Sisaimbui; for hell, Nakupaju and Nakapoti.”^[339] Speaking of the Guarani, Father Montoya says: “There is in this language a constant changing of the letters, for which no sufficient rules can be given.”^[340] And Dr. Darapsky in his recently published study of the Araucanian of Chile gives the following equation of permutable letters in that tongue:

B=W=F=U=Ú=I=E=G=GH=HU.^[341]

The laws of the conversion of sounds of the one organ into those of another have not yet been discovered; but the 399above examples, which are by no means isolated ones, serve to admonish us that the phonetic elements of primitive speech probably had no fixedness.

There is another oddity about some of these consonantal sounds which I may notice in passing. Some of them are not true elementary sounds; they cannot stand alone, but must always have another consonant associated with them. Thus, the labial B is common in Guarani; but it must always be preceded by an M. In Nahuatl the liquid L is frequent; but it is the initial of no word in that language. The Nahuas apparently could not pronounce it, unless some other articulate sound preceded it.

Albornoz, in his Grammar of the Chapanec Tongue,^[342] states that the natives cannot pronounce an initial B, G, Y, or D, without uttering an N sound before it.

The third point in the phonology of these tongues to which I alluded is the frequency with which the phonetic elements, as graphically expressed, are inadequate to convey the idea. I may quote a remark by Howse in his Cree Grammar, which is true probably of all primitive speech, “Emphasis, accent and modifications of vocal expression; which are inadequately expressed in writing, seem to constitute an essential, perhaps the vital part of Indian language.” In such modifications I include tone, accent, stress, vocal inflection, quantity and pause. These are with much difficulty or not at all includable in a graphic method, and yet are frequently significant. Take the pause or hiatus. I have already mentioned that in Tinné it correlates a whole series of ideas. M. Belcourt, in his Grammar of the 400Sauteux, an Algonkin dialect, states that the pause may completely change the meaning of a word and place it in another class; it is also essential in that language in the formation of the tenses.^[343] This is the case in the Guarani of South America. Montoya illustrates it by the example: Peru o’u, Peter ate it; but Peru ou, Peter came; quite another thing, you will observe.^[344]

The stress laid on a vowel-sound often alters its meaning. In the Sauteux, Belcourt points out that this constitutes the only distinction between the first and second persons in participles. In the Nahuatl this alone distinguishes many plural forms from their singulars; and many similar examples could be cited.

With difficulties of this nature to encounter, a person accustomed to the definite phonology of European tongues is naturally at a loss. The Spanish scholar Uricoechea expresses this in relating his efforts to learn the Chibcha of New Granada, a tongue also characterized by these fluctuating phonetics. He visited the region where it is still spoken with a grammar and phrase-book in his hand, and found to his disappointment that they could not understand one word he said. He then employed a native who spoke Spanish, and with him practiced some phrases until he believed he had them perfect. Another disappointment—not one of them was understood. He returned to his teacher and again repeated them; but what was his dismay when 401not even his teacher recognized a single word! After that Uricoechea gave up the attempt.^[345]

Leaving now the domain of phonology and turning to that of lexicography, I will point out to you a very curious phenomenon in primitive speech. I have already alluded to it in quoting M. Petitot’s remark that in Tinné a sound often means both a notion and its opposite; that, for instance, the same word may express good and bad, and another both high and low. To use M. Petitot’s own words, “a certain number of consonants have the power of expressing a given order of ideas or things, and also the contradictory of this order.” In Tinné, a great many words for opposite ideas are the same or nearly the same, derived from the same significant elements. Thus, son good, sona bad; tezo, sweet, tezon bitter; ya immense, ya very small; inla one time, inlasin every time; and so on.

This union of opposite significations reappears in the ultimate radicals of the Cree language. These, says Mr. Howse,^[346] whose Grammar I again quote, express Being in its positive and negative modes: “These opposite modes are expressed by modifications of the same element, furnishing two classes of terms widely different from each other in signification.” In Cree the leading substantive radical is eth, which originally meant both Being and Not-Being. In the present language eth remains as the current positive, ith as the current privative. It means within, ut without; and like parallelisms run through many expressions, indicating 402that numerous series of opposite ideas are developments from the same original sounds.

I have found a number of such examples in the Nahuatl of Mexico, and I am persuaded that they are very usual in American tongues. Dr. Carl Abel has pointed out many in the ancient Coptic, and I doubt not they were characteristic of all primitive speech.

To explain their presence we must reflect on the nature of the human mind, and the ascertained laws of thought. One of these fundamental and necessary laws of thought, that usually called the second, was expressed by the older logicians in the phrase Omnis determinatio est negatio, and by their modern followers in the formula, “A is not not-A;” in other words, a quality, an idea, an element of knowledge, can rise into cognition only by being limited by that which it is not. That by which it is limited is known in logic as its privative. In a work published some years ago I pointed out that this privative is not an independent thought, as some have maintained, but that the positive and its privative are really two aspects of the same thought.^[347] This highly important distinction explains how in primitive speech, before the idea had risen into clear cognition, both it and its privative were expressed by the same sound; and when it did rise into such cognition, and then into expression, the original unity 403is exhibited by the identity of the radical. Thus it happens that from such an unexpected quarter as an analysis of Cree grammar do we obtain a confirmation of the starting point of the logic of Hegel in his proposition that the identity of the Being and the Not-being is the ultimate equation of thought.

The gradual development of grammar is strikingly illustrated in these languages. Their most prominent trait is what is called incorporation. Subject, verb, direct object and remote object, are all expressed in one word. Some have claimed that there are American languages of which this is not true; but I think I have shown in an essay published some time ago,^[348] that this opinion arises from our insufficient knowledge of the alleged exceptions. At any rate, this incorporation was undoubtedly a trait of primitive speech in America and elsewhere. Primitive man, said Herder, was like a baby; he wanted to say all at once. He condensed his whole sentence into a single word. Archdeacon Hunter, in his Lecture on the Cree Language, gives as an example the scriptural phrase, “I shall have you for my disciples,” which, in that tongue, is expressed by one word.^[349]

So far as I have been able to analyze these primitive sentence-words, they always express being in relation; and hence they partake of the nature of verbs rather than nouns. In this conclusion I am obliged to differ with the eminent linguist Professor Steinthal, who, in his profound exposition of the relations of psychology to grammar, maintains that 404while the primitive sentence was a single word, that word was a noun, a name.^[350]

It is evident that the primitive man did not connect his sentences. One followed the other disjointedly, unconnectedly. This is so plainly marked in American tongues that the machinery for connecting sentences is absent. This machinery consists properly of the relative pronoun and the conjunction. You will be surprised to hear that there is no American language, none that I know, which possesses either of these parts of speech. That which does duty for the conjunction in the Maya and Nahuatl, for instance, is a noun meaning associate or companion, with a prefixed possessive.^[351]

Equally foreign to primitive speech was any expression of time in connection with verbal forms; in other words, there was no such thing as tenses. We are so accustomed to link actions to time, past, present, or future, that it is a little difficult to understand how this accessory can be omitted in intelligible discourse. It is perfectly evident, however, from the study of many American tongues, that at one period of their growth they possessed for a long interval only one tense, which served indifferently for past, present, and future;^[352] and even yet most of them form the past and future 405by purely material means, as the addition of an adverb of time, by accent, quantity or repetition, and in others the tense relation is still unknown.^[353]

In some tongues, the Omagua of the upper Orinoco for example, there is no sort of connection between the verbal stem and its signs of tense, mode or person. They have not even any fixed order. In such languages there is no difference in sound between the words for “I marry,” and “my wife;” “I eat,” and “my food;” between “Paul dies,” “Paul died,” “Paul will die,” and “Paul is dead.”^[354] Through such tongues we can distinctly perceive a time when the verb had neither tense, mode, nor person; when it was not even a verb nor yet a verbal, but an epicene sound which could be adapted to any service of speech.

It is also evident that things were not thought of, or talked of, out of their natural relations. There are still in most American tongues large classes of words, such as the parts of the body and terms of kinship, which cannot stand alone. They must always be accompanied by a pronoun expressing relation.

Few American tongues have any adjectives, the Cree, for instance, not a dozen in all. Prepositions are equally rare, and articles are not found. These facts testify that what are called “the grammatical categories” were wholly absent in the primitive speech of man.

406So also were those adjectives which are called numerals. There are American tongues which have no words for any numerals whatever. The numerical concepts one, two, three, four, cannot be expressed in these languages for lack of terms with any such meaning.^[355] This was a great puzzle to the missionaries when they undertook to expound to their flocks the doctrine of the Trinity. They were in worse case even than the missionary to an Oregon tribe, who, to convey the notion of soul to his hearers, could find no word in their language nearer to it than one which meant “the lower gut.”

A very interesting chapter in the study of these tongues is that which reveals the evolution of specific distinctions, those inductive generalizations under which primitive man classified the objects of the universe about him. These distinctions were either grammatical or logical, that is, either formal or material. That most widely seen in America is a division of all existence into those which are considered living and those considered not living. This constitutes the second great generalization of the primitive mind, the first, as I have said, having been that into Being and Not-being. The distinctions of Living and Not-living gave rise to the animate and inanimate conjugations. A grammatical sex distinction, which is the prevailing one in the grammars of the Aryan tongues, does not exist in any American dialect known to me.^[356]

407It is true that abstract general terms are absent or rare in the most primitive tongues. On the other hand, we find in them a great many classificatory particles. These correspond only remotely to anything known in Aryan speech, and seem far more abstract than generic nouns. I will illustrate what they are by an example taken from the Hidatsa, a dialect of the Dakota.

The word for sled in that dialect is midu-maidutsada. The first part of this compound, midu, means anything of wood or into which wood enters. Fire is midé because it is kept up with wood. With the phonetic laxity which I have before noted, the first syllable mi may as correctly be pronounced bi or wi. It is a common nominal prefix, of vague significance, but seems to classify objects as distinctives. Ma designates objects whose immediate use is not expressed; i denotes instrument or material; du, conveys that the cause of the action is not specified; tsa intimates the action is that of separating; da, that this is done quickly (tsa-da, to slide).^[357]

Thus by the juxtaposition of one classificatory particle after another, seven in number, all of them logical universals, the savage makes up the name of the specific object.

This system was probably the first adopted by man when he began to set in order his perceptions within the categories of his understanding, with the aim of giving them vocal expression. 408It is a plan which we find most highly developed in the rudest languages, and therefore we may reasonably believe that it characterized prehistoric speech.

The question has been put by psychological grammarians, which one of the senses most helped man in the creation of language—or to express it in modern scientific parlance, was primitive man a visuaire or an auditaire? Did he model his sounds after what he heard, or what he saw? The former opinion has been the more popular, and has given rise to the imitative or “onomatopoetic” theory of language. No doubt there is a certain degree of truth in this, but the analysis of American tongues leans decidedly toward classing primitive man among the visuaires. His earliest significant sounds seem to have been expressive of motion and rest, energy and its absence, space and direction, color and form, and the like. A different opinion has been maintained by Darwin and by many who have studied the problems presented by the origin of words from a merely physical or physiological standpoint, but a careful investigation shows that it was the sense of sight rather than of hearing which was the prompter to vocal utterance. But the consideration of the source of primitive significant sounds lies without the bounds of my present study.

It will be seen from these remarks that the primitive speech of man was far more rudimentary than any language known to us. It had no grammatical form; so fluctuating were its phonetics, and so much depended on gesture, tone, and stress, that its words could not have been reduced to writing, nor arranged in alphabetic sequence; these words often signified logical contradictories, and which of the antithetic 409meanings was intended could be guessed only from the accent or sign; it possessed no prepositions nor conjunctions, no numerals, no pronouns of any kind, no forms to express singular or plural, male or female, past or present; the different vowel-sounds and the different consonantal groups conveyed specific significance, and were of more import than the syllables which they formed. The concept of time came much later than that of space, and for a long while was absent.

410

THE CONCEPTION OF LOVE IN SOME AMERICAN LANGUAGES.^[358]

“The words which denote love, describing a sentiment at once powerful and delicate, reveal the inmost heart of those who created them. The vital importance attached to this sentiment renders these beautiful words especially adapted to point out the exceeding value of language as a true autobiography of nations.”

This quotation is from an essay by a thoughtful writer, Dr. Carl Abel, in which he has gathered from four languages, the Latin, English, Hebrew and Russian, their expressions for this sweet emotion, and subjected them to a careful analysis.^[359] The perusal of his article has led me to make some similar examinations of American languages; but with this difference in method, that while Dr. Abel takes the languages named in the fullness of their development and does not occupy himself with the genesis of the terms of affection, I shall give more particular attention to their history and derivation as furnishing illustrations of the origin and growth of those altruistic sentiments which are revealed in their strongest expression in the emotions of friendship and love.

411Upon these sentiments are based those acts which unite man to man in amicable fellowship and mutual interchange of kindly offices, thus creating a nobler social compact than that which rests merely on increased power of defence or aggression. These sentiments are those which bind parent to child and child to parent, and thus supply the foundation upon which the family in the true significance of the term should rest. These are they which, directed toward the ruler or the state, find expression in personal loyalty and patriotic devotion. Surpassing all in fervor and potency, these sentiments, when exhibited in love between the sexes, direct the greater part of the activity of each individual life, mould the forms of the social relations, and control the perpetuation of the species. Finally, in their last and highest manifestations, these sentiments are those which have suggested to the purest and clearest intellects both the most exalted intellectual condition of man, and the most sublime definition of divinity.^[360] These are good reasons, therefore, why we should scan with more than usual closeness the terms for the conception of love in the languages of nations.

Another purpose which I shall have in view will be to illustrate by these words the wonderful parallelism which everywhere presents itself in the operations of the human mind, and to show how it is governed by the same associations of ideas both in the new and the old worlds.

412As a preparation for the latter object, let us take a glance at the derivation of the principal words expressing love in the Aryan languages. The most prominent of them may be traced back to one of two ruling ideas, the one intimating a similarity or likeness between the persons loving, the other a wish or desire. The former conveys the notion that the feeling is mutual, the latter that it is stronger on one side than on the other.

These diverse origins are well illustrated by the French aimer and the English love. Aimer, from the Latin amare, brings us to the Greek αμα, ομος, both of which spring from the Sanscrit som; from which in turn the Germans get their words sammt, along with, and zusammen, together; while we obtain from this root almost without change our words similar and same. Etymologically, therefore, those who love are alike; they are the same in such respects that they are attracted to one another, on the proverbial principle that “birds of a feather flock together.”

Now turning to the word love, German liebe, Russian lubov, lubity, we find that it leads us quite a different road. It is traced back without any material change to the Sanscrit lobha, covetousness, the ancient Coptic λἰβε, to want, to desire. In this origin we see the passion portrayed as a yearning to possess the loved object; and in the higher sense to enjoy the presence and sympathy of the beloved, to hold sweet communion with him or her.

A class of ideas closely akin to this are conveyed in such words as “attached to,” “attraction,” “affection,” and the like, which make use of the figure of speech that the lover is fastened to, drawn toward, or bound up with the beloved 413object. We often express this metaphor in full in such phrases as “the bonds of friendship,” etc.

This third class of words, although in the history of language they are frequently of later growth than the two former, probably express the sentiment which underlies both these, and that is a dim, unconscious sense of the unity which is revealed to man most perfectly in the purest and highest love, which at its sublimest height does away with the antagonism of independent personality, and blends the I and the thou in a oneness of existence.

Although in this, its completest expression, we must seek examples solely between persons of opposite sex, it will be well to consider in an examination like the present the love between men, which is called friendship, that between parents and children, and that toward the gods, the givers of all good things. The words conveying such sentiments will illustrate many features of the religious and social life of the nations using them.

I. The Algonkin.

I begin with this group of dialects, once widely spread throughout the St. Lawrence valley and the regions adjoining; and among them I select especially the Cree and the Chipeway, partly because we know more about them, and partly because they probably represent the common tongue in its oldest and purest type. They are closely allied, the same roots appearing in both with slight phonetic variations.

In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up 414the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man.^[361]

In the Chipeway this root has but one form, sagi; but in Cree it has two, a weak and a strong form, saki and sakk. The meaning of the latter is more particularly to fasten to, to attach to. From it are derived the words for string or cord, the verbs “to tie,” “to fasten,” etc.; and also some of the coarsest words to express the sexual relation.^[362] Both these roots are traced back to the primary element of the Algonkin language expressed by the letters sak or s—k. This conveys the generic notion of force or power exerted by one over another,^[363] and is apparently precisely identical with the fundamental meaning of the Latin afficio, “to affect one in some manner by active agency,”^[364] from which word, I need hardly add, were derived affectus and affectio and our “affection;” thus we at once meet with an absolute parallelism in the working of the Aryan Italic and the American Algonkin mind.

The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love and that which the gods have for men. These 415are built up on the disyllabic radical espi or aspi, which is an instrumental particle signifying “by means of, with the aid of.”^[365] Toward the gods, such words refer to those who aid us; toward children those whom their parents aid; and from children toward parents, again, those from whom aid is received.

For love between men, friendship, the Cree employs some words from the radical sâki; but more frequently those compounded with the root wit or witch, which means “in company with,”^[366] and is the precise analogue of the syllable com (Latin, con) in the English words companion, comrade, compeer, confederate, etc.; it conveys the idea of association in life and action, and that association a voluntary and pleasure-giving one.

In the Chipeway there is a series of expressions for family love and friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological process which developed the Latin amare from the Sanscrit sam (see above). They may be illustrated by the melodious term, which in that dialect means both friendship and relationship, inawendawin. This is an abstract verbal noun from the theme ni inawa, I resemble him, which is built up from the radicle in. This particle denotes a certain prevailing way or manner, and appears both in Cree and Chipeway in a variety of words.^[367] The 416principle of similarity is thus fully expressed as the basis of friendship. To see how apparent this is we have but to remember the English, “I like him,” i. e., there is something in him like me.

The feebler sentiment of merely liking a person or thing is expressed in the Chipeway by a derivative from the adjective mino, good, well, and signifies that he or it seems good to me.^[368]

The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek ἀγἀπη, we find expressed in both the dialects by derivation from a root different from any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms kis, keche, or kiji, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy.^[369] Concretely it signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent divinity.^[370]

417

II. The Nahuatl.

The Nahuatl, Mexican or Aztec language was spoken extensively throughout Mexico and Central America, and every tribe who used it could boast of a degree of culture considerably above that of any of the Algonkin communities. Such being the case, it is rather surprising to note how extremely poor in comparison is the Nahuatl in independent radicals denoting love or affection. In fact, there is only one word in the language which positively has this signification, and it, with its derivatives, is called upon to express every variety of love, human and divine, carnal and chaste, between men and between the sexes, and by human beings toward inanimate things.

This word is tlazótla, he loves. It is no easy matter to trace its history. By well known laws of Nahuatl etymology we know that the root is zo. We have from this same root several other words of curiously diverse meanings. Thus, izo, to bleed, to draw blood, either for health, or, as was the custom of those nations, as a sacrifice before idols; izolini, to grow old, to wear out, applied to garments; tlazoti, to offer for sale at a high price; and zozo, to string together, as the natives did flowers, peppers, beads, etc. Now, what idea served as the common starting-point of all these expressions? The answer is that we find it in the word zo as applied to a sharp-pointed instrument, a thorn, or a bone or stone awl, used in the earliest times for puncturing or transfixing objects. From this came zozo, to transfix with such an instrument, and string on a cord; izoliui, to be full of holes, as if repeatedly punctured, and thus worn out; and izo, to bleed, 418because that was done by puncturing the flesh with the thorns of the maguey or sharp obsidian points.^[371]

But how do we bring these into connection with the sentiment of love and its verbal expression? We might indeed seek an illustration of the transfer from classical mythology, and adduce the keen-pointed arrows of Cupid, the darts of love, as pointing out the connection. But I fear this would be crediting the ancient Nahuas with finer feelings than they deserve. I gravely doubt that they felt the shafts of the tender passion with any such susceptibility as to employ this metaphor. Much more likely is it that tlazótla, to love, is derived directly from the noun tlazótl, which means something strung with or fastened to another. This brings us directly back to the sense of “attached to” in English, and to that of the root saki in Algonkin, the idea of being bound to another by ties of emotion and affection.

But there is one feature in this derivation which tells seriously against the national psychology of the Nahuas; this, their only word for love, is not derived, as is the Algonkin, from the primary meaning of the root, but from a secondary and later signification. This hints ominously at the probability that the ancient tongue had for a long time no word at all to express this, the highest and noblest emotion of the 419human heart, and that consequently this emotion itself had not risen to consciousness in the national mind.

But the omissions of the fathers were more than atoned for by the efforts of their children. I know no more instructive instance in the history of language to illustrate how original defects are amended in periods of higher culture by the linguistic faculty, than this precise point in the genesis of the Nahuatl tongue. The Nahuas, when they approached the upper levels of emotional development, found their tongue singularly poor in radicals conveying such conceptions. As the literal and material portions of their speech offered them such inadequate means of expression, they turned toward its tropical and formal portions, and in those realms reached a degree of development in this direction which far surpasses that in any other language known to me.

In the formal portion of the language they were not satisfied with one, but adopted a variety of devices to this end. Thus: all verbs expressing emotion may have an intensive termination suffixed, imparting to them additional force; again, certain prefixes indicating civility, respect and affection may be employed in the imperative and optative moods; again, a higher synthetic construction may be employed in the sentence, by which the idea expressed is emphasized, a device in constant use in their poetry; and especially the strength of emotion is indicated by suffixing a series of terminations expressing contempt, reverence or love. The latter are wonderfully characteristic of Nahuatl speech. They are not confined to verbs and nouns, but may be added to adjectives, pronouns, participles, and even to 420adverbs and postpositions. Thus every word in the sentence is made to carry its burden of affection to the ear of the beloved object!

Add to these facilities the remarkable power of the Nahuatl to impart tropical and figurative senses to words by the employment of rhetorical resources, and to present them as one idea by means of the peculiarities of its construction, and we shall not consider as overdrawn the expression of Professor De la Rosa when he writes: “There can be no question but that in the manifestation in words of the various emotions, the Nahuatl finds no rival, not only among the languages of modern Europe, but in the Greek itself.”^[372]

The Nahuatl word for friendship is icniuhtli. This is a compound of the preposition ic, with; the noun-ending tli; and the adverbial yuh, or noyuh, which means “of the same kind.” The word, therefore, has the same fundamental conception as the Latin amicus and the Cree inawema, but it was not developed into a verbal to express the suffering of the passion itself.^[373]

III. The Maya.

The whole peninsula of Yucatan was inhabited by the Mayas, and tribes speaking related dialects of their tongue lived in Guatemala, Chipapas, and on the Gulf Shore 421north of Vera Cruz. All these depended chiefly on agriculture for subsistence, were builders of stone houses, and made use of a system of written records. Their tongue, therefore, deserves special consideration as that of a nation with strong natural tendencies to development.

In turning to the word for love in the Maya vocabulary, we are at once struck with the presence of a connected series of words expressing this emotion, while at the same time they, or others closely akin to them and from the same root, mean pain, injury, difficulty, suffering, wounds and misery. Both are formed by the usual rules from the monosyllable ya.^[374]

Were the ancient Mayas so sensitive to love’s wounds and the pangs of passion as to derive their very words for suffering from the name of this sentiment?

No; that solution is too unlikely for our acceptance. More probable is it that we have here an illustration of the development of language from interjectional cries. In fact, we may be said to have the proof of it, for we discover that this monosyllable ya is still retained in the language as a verb, with the signification “to feel anything deeply, whether as a pain or as a pleasure.”^[375] Its derivatives were developed 422with both meanings, and as love and friendship are the highest forms of pleasure, the word ya in its happier senses became confined to them.

It seems to have sufficed to express the conception in all its forms, for the writers in the language apply it to the love of the sexes, to that between parents and children, that among friends, also to that which men feel toward God, and that which He is asserted to feel toward men.^[376]

The Mayas, therefore, were superior to the Nahuas in possessing a radical word which expressed the joy of love; and they must be placed above even the early Aryans in that this radical was in significance purely psychical, referring strictly to a mental state, and neither to similarity nor desire.

It is noteworthy that this interjectional root, although belonging to the substructure of the language, does not appear with the meaning of love in the dialects of the Maya stock. In them the words for this sentiment are derived from other roots.

Thus among the Huastecas, residing on the Gulf of Mexico, north of Vera Cruz, the word for love is canezal. It is employed for both human and divine love, and also means anything precious and to be carefully guarded as of advantage 423to the possessor.^[377] There is no difficulty in following its development when we turn to the Maya, which preserves the most numerous ancient forms and meanings of any dialect of this stock. In it we discover that the verb can means “to affect another in some way, to give another either by physical contact or example a virtue, vice, disease or attribute.”^[378] Here again we come upon the precise correlative of the Latin afficio, from which proceeds our “affection,” etc.

The Guatemalan tribes, the principal of which were and are the Quiches and Cakchiquels, did not accept either ya or can as the root from which to build their expressions for the sentiment of love. In both these dialects the word for to love is logoh. It also means “to buy,” and this has led a recent writer to hold up to ridicule the Spanish missionaries who chose this word to express both human and divine love. Dr. Stoll, the writer referred to, intimates that it had no other meaning than “to buy” in the pure original tongue, and that the only word for the passion is ah, to want, to desire.^[379] In this he does not display his usual accuracy, for we find logoh used in the sense “to like,” “to love,” in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, written by a native who had grown to manhood before the Spaniards first entered his country.^[380]

424That the verb logoh means, both in origin and later use, “to buy,” as well as “to love,” is undoubtedly true. Its root logh is identical with the Maya loh, which has the meanings “to exchange, to buy, to redeem, to emancipate.” It was the word selected by the Franciscan missionaries to express the redemption of the world by Christ, and was applied to the redemption of captives and slaves. It might be suggested that it bears a reference to “marriage by purchase;” but I think that “to buy,” and “to love,” may be construed as developments of the same idea of prizing highly. When we say that a person is appreciated, we really say that he has had a proper price put upon him. The Latin carus, which Cicero calls ipsum verbum amoris,^[381] means costly in price as well as beloved; and the tender English “dear” means quite as often that the object is expensive to buy, as that we dote very much upon it. Nor need we go outside of American languages for illustrations; in Nahuatl tlazóti means to offer for sale at a high price; and in Huasteca canel, from the same root as canezal, to love, means something precious in a pecuniary sense, as well as an object of the affections. Other instances will present themselves when we come to examine some of the South American 425tongues. But from what I have already given, it is evident that there is nothing contradictory in the double meaning of the verb logoh.

IV. The Qquichua.

The ancient Peruvians who spoke the Qquichua language had organized a system of government and a complex social fabric unsurpassed by any on the continent. The numerous specimens of their arts which have been preserved testify strongly to the licentiousness of their manners, standing in this respect in marked contrast to the Aztecs, whose art was pure. It must be regarded as distinctly in connection with this that we find a similar contrast in their languages. We have seen that in the Nahuatl there appears to have been no word with a primary signification “to love” or any such conception. The Qquichua, on the contrary, is probably the richest language on the continent, not only in separate words denoting affection, but in modifications of these by imparting to them delicate shades of meaning through the addition of particles. As an evidence of the latter, it is enough to cite the fact that Dr. Anchorena, in his grammar of the tongue, sets forth nearly six hundred combinations of the word munay, to love!^[382]

The Qquichua is fortunate in other respects; it has some literature of its own, and its structure has been carefully studied by competent scholars; it is possible, therefore, to examine its locutions in a more satisfactory manner than is the case with most American languages. Its most celebrated literary monument is the drama of Ollanta, supposed 426to have been composed about the time of the conquest. It has been repeatedly edited and translated, most accurately by Pacheco Zegarra.^[383] His text may be considered as the standard of the pure ancient tongue.

Of Qquichua words for the affections, that in widest use is the one above quoted, munay. It is as universal in its application as its English equivalent, being applied to filial and parental love as well as to that of the sexes, to affection between persons of the same sex, and to the love of God. No other word of the class has such a wide significance. It ranges from an expression of the warmest emotion down to that faint announcement of a preference which is conveyed in the English, “I should prefer.”^[384]

On looking for its earlier and concrete sense, we find that munay expressed merely a sense of want, an appetite and the accompanying desire of satisfying it, hence the will, or the wish, not subjectively, but in the objective manifestation.^[385] Therefore it is in origin nearly equivalent to the earliest meaning of “love,” as seen in the Sanscrit and the Coptic.

427While munay is thus to love on reasonable grounds and with definite purpose, blind, unreasoning, absorbing passion is expressed by huaylluni. This is nearly always confined to sexual love, and conveys the idea of the sentiment showing itself in action by those sweet signs and marks of devotion which are so highly prized by the loving heart. The origin of this word indicates its sentient and spontaneous character. Its radical is the interjection huay, which among that people is an inarticulate cry of tenderness and affection.^[386]

The verb lluylluy means literally to be tender or soft, as fruit, or the young of animals; and applied to the sentiments, to love with tenderness, to have as a darling, to caress lovingly. It has less of sexuality in it than the word last mentioned, and is applied by girls to each other, and as a term of family fondness. It is on a parallel with the English “dear,” “to hold dear,” etc.^[387]

In the later compositions in Qquichua the favorite word for love is ccuyay. Originally this expression meant to pity, and in this sense it occurs in the drama of Ollanta; but also even there as a term signifying the passion of love apart from any idea of compassion.^[388] In the later songs, those 428whose composition may be placed in this century, it is preferred to munay as the most appropriate term for the love between the sexes.^[389] From it also is derived the word for charity and benevolence.

As munay is considered to refer to natural affection felt within the mind, mayhuay is that ostentatious sentiment which displays itself in words of tenderness and acts of endearment, but leaves it an open question whether these are anything more than simulated signs of emotion.^[390]

This list is not exhaustive of the tender words in the Qquichua; but it will serve to show that the tongue was rich in them, and that the ancient Peruvians recognized many degrees and forms of this moving sentiment.

What is also noteworthy is the presence in this language of the most philosophical term for friendship in its widest sense that can be quoted from any American language. It is runaccuyay, compounded of ccuyani, mentioned above, and runa, man—the love of mankind. This compound, however, does not occur in the Ollanta drama, and it may have been manufactured by the missionaries. The usual term is maciy, which means merely “associate,” or kochomaciy, a table-companion or convive.

V. The Tupi-Guarani.

The linguistic stock which has the widest extension in South America is that which is represented in Southern Brazil by the Guarani, and in Central and Northern by the Tupi or Lingoa Geral. The latter is spoken along the Amazon 429and its tributaries for a distance of twenty-five hundred miles. It is by no means identical with the Guarani, but the near relationship of the two is unmistakable. The Guarani presents the simpler and more primitive forms, and may be held to present the more archaic type.

The word for love in the Guarani is aihu, in another form haihu, the initial h being dropped in composition. This expression is employed for all the varieties of the sentiment, between men, between the sexes, and for that which is regarded as divine.^[391] For “a friend,” they have no other term than one which means a visitor or guest; and from this their expression for “friendship” is derived, which really means “hospitality.”^[392]

Verbal combinations in Guarani are visually simple, and I do not think we can be far wrong in looking upon aihu as a union of the two primary words ai and hu. The former, ai, means self or the same; and the latter, hu, is the verb to find, or, to be present.^[393] “To love,” in Guarani, therefore, would mean, “to find oneself in another,” or, less metaphysically, “to discover in another a likeness to one’s self.” This again is precisely the primary signification of the Latin amare; and if the sentiment impressed in that way the barbarous 430ancient Aryans, there is no reason why it would not have struck the Guaranis in the same manner.

In the Tupi or Lingua Geral the word for love is evidently but a dialectic variation of that in Guarani. It is given by some authors as çaiçu, plainly a form of haihu; and by others as çauçu.^[394] These forms cannot be analyzed in the Tupi itself, which illustrates its more modern type.

There are other dialects of this widespread stem, but it would not be worth while to follow this expression further in its diverse forms. It is interesting, however, to note that which appears in the Arawack, spoken in Guiana. In that tongue to love is kanisin, in which the radical is ani or ansi. Now we find that ani means “of a kind,” peculiar to, belonging to, etc. Once more it is the notion of similarity, of “birds of a feather,” which underlies the expression for the conception of love.^[395]

CONCLUSIONS.

If, now, we review the ground we have gone over, and classify the conception of love as revealed in the languages under discussion, we find that their original modes of expression were as follows:

4311. Inarticulate cries of emotion (Cree, Maya, Qquichua).

2. Assertions of sameness or similarity (Cree, Nahuatl, Tupi, Arawack).

3. Assertions of conjunction or union (Cree, Nahuatl, Maya).

4. Assertions of a wish, desire or longing (Cree, Cakchiquel, Qquichua, Tupi).

These categories are not exhaustive of the words which I have brought forward, but they include most of them, and probably were this investigation extended to embrace numerous other tongues, we should find that in them all the principal expressions for the sentiment of love are drawn from one or other of these fundamental notions. A most instructive fact is that these notions are those which underlie the majority of the words for love in the great Aryan family of languages. They thus reveal the parallel paths which the human mind everywhere pursued in giving articulate expression to the passions and emotions of the soul. In this sense there is a oneness in all languages, which speaks conclusively for the oneness in the sentient and intellectual attributes of the species.

We may also investigate these categories, thus shown to be practically universal, from another point of view. We may inquire which of them comes the nearest to the correct expression of love in its highest philosophic meaning. Was this meaning apprehended, however dimly, by man in the very infancy of his speech-inventing faculty?

In another work, published some years ago, I have attempted a philosophic analysis of the sentiment of love. Quoting from some of the subtlest dissectors of human 432motive, I have shown that they pronounce love to be “the volition of the end,” or “the resting in an object as an end.” These rather obscure scholastic formulas I have attempted to explain by the definition: “Love is the mental impression of rational action whose end is in itself.”^[396] As every end or purpose of action implies the will or wish to that end, those expressions for love are most truly philosophic which express the will, the desire, the yearning after the object. The fourth, therefore, of the above categories is that which presents the highest forms of expression of this conception. That it also expresses lower forms is true, but this merely illustrates the evolution of the human mind as expressed in language. Love is ever the wish; but while in lower races and coarser natures this wish is for an object which in turn is but a means to an end, for example, sensual gratification, in the higher this object is the end itself, beyond which the soul does not seek to go, in which it rests, and with which both reason and emotion find the satisfaction of boundless activity without incurring the danger of satiety.

433

THE LINEAL MEASURES OF THE SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.^[397]

Positive progress in constructive art can be accurately estimated by the kind and perfection of the instruments of precision employed by the artists. A correct theory of architecture or of sculpture must have as its foundation a correct system of weights and measures, and recognized units and standards of gravity and extension. Where these are not found, all is guess-work, and a more or less haphazard rule-of-thumb.

In a study of the art-products of Mexico and Central America, it has occurred to me that we may with advantage call linguistics to our aid, and attempt to ascertain, by an analysis of the words for weights and measures, what units, if any, were employed by those who constructed the massive works in that region, which still remain for our astonishment. The tongues I shall examine are the Maya of Yucatan, its related dialect the Cakchiquel of Guatemala, and the Nahuatl or Aztec of Mexico. The most striking monuments of art in North America are found in the territories where these were spoken at the time of the Conquest. The Cakchiquel may be considered to include the Quiche and the 434Tzutuhil, both of which are closely associated to it as dialects of the same mother tongue.

THE MAYAS.

The generic word in Maya for both measuring and weighing, and for measures and weights, is at present ppiz, the radical sense of which is “to put in order,” “to arrange definite limits.” Its apparent similarity to the Spanish pesar, French peser, etc., seems accidental, as it is in Maya the root of various words meaning battle, to fight, etc., from the “order of battle,” observed on such occasions. Any weight or measure is spoken of as ppizib, to measure land is ppiz-luum, a foot measure ppiz-oc etc. But I am quite certain that the original scope of the word did not include weight, as there is no evidence that the ancient Mayas knew anything about a system of estimating quantity by gravity. If the word is not from the Spanish pesar, it has extended its meaning since the conquest.

The Maya measures are derived directly, and almost exclusively, from the human body, and largely from the hand and foot.

Oc, the foot; chekoc, the footstep, the print or length of the foot, is a measure of length. Other forms of the same are chekel, chekeb, chekeb-oc, etc.; and this abundance of synonyms would seem to show that the measure of a foot was very familiar and frequent. The verb is chekoc (tah, té), as in the phrase:

Chekoctè y-otoch Ku.

He measured by feet His house God.

435i. e. He measured by feet the church. From this was distinguished—

Xukab, paces or strides, a word confined to the paces of man. The verb is Xukab (tah, té), to step off, to measure by paces.

Quite a series of measures were recognized from the ground (or, as some say, from the point of the foot) to the upper portions of the body.

Hun cal coy u-xul (one to the neck of the ankle its-end), extending from the ground to the narrowest portion of the ankle.

Hun ppuloc u-xul (one calf-of-the-leg its-end), from the ground to the highest portion of the calf of the leg. The word xul means end or limit, and is used often adverbially, as in the phrase uay u-xul, literally “here its end,” or “thus far” (Span. hasta aqui).

Hun pixib, the distance from the ground (or point of the toes) to the knee-cap, from piix, the knee. Also called hun hol piix, from hol, head, the knee-cap being called “the knee-head.”

Hun hachabex, one girdle, from the ground to the belt or girdle, to which the skirt was fashioned (from hach, to tie, to fasten). The same measure was called hun theth, the word theth being applied to the knot of the girdle.

Hun tanam, from the ground to the border of the true ribs; from tanam, the liver. The Diccionario de Motul gives the example, hun tanam in ual, one tanam (is) my corn, i. e., my corn reaches to my chest. It adds that the measure is from the point of the foot to the chest.

Hun tzem, a measure from the ground to a line drawn from one mamma to the other.

436Hun cal u-xul, one neck its-end, from the ground to the border (upper or lower) of the neck.

Hun chi, from the mouth, chi, to the ground.

Hun holom, one head, from the top of the head to the ground. This is also called hun uallah, one time the stature or height of a man, from a root meaning “to draw to a point,” “to finish off.” The Spanish writers say that one uallah was equal to about three varas, and was used as a square measure in meting corn fields.^[398] The Spanish vara differed as much as the English ell, and to the writer in question could not have represented quite two feet. Elsewhere he defines the vara as half a braza or fathom. (See below, betan.)

The hand in Maya is expressed by the word kab, which also means the arm, and is more correctly therefore translated by the anatomical term “upper extremity.” This is not an uncommon example in American tongues. When it is necessary to define the hand specifically the Mayas say u cheel kab, “the branch of the arm,” and for the fingers u nii kab, “the points (literally, noses) of the arm” or upper extremity.

The shortest measurements known to them appear to have been finger-breadths, which are expressed by the phrase u nii kab. The thumb was called u nā kab, literally “the mother of the hand” or arm, and as a measure of length the distance from the first joint to the end of the nail was in use and designated by the same term.

With the hand open and the fingers extended, there were three different measures or spans recognized by the Mayas.

4371. The nāb, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the middle finger.

2. The oecnab, or little nāb, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the index finger. This is the span yet most in use by the native inhabitants of Yucatan (Dr. Berendt).

3. The chi nāb, or the nāb which extends to the edge, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger (Pio Perez).

The kok was a hand measure formed by closing the fingers and extending the thumb. Measuring from the outer border of the hand to the end of the thumb, it would be about seven inches.

The cuc or noch cuc (noch is a term applied to a bony prominence, in this instance to the olecranon) was the cubit, and was measured from the summit of the olecranon to the end of the fingers, about eighteen inches.

The most important of the longer measures was the zap or zapal. It was the distance between the extremities of the extended arms, and is usually put down at a fathom or six feet.

The half of it was called betan or pātan, meaning “to the middle of the chest.” Canes and cords were cut of the fixed length of the zap and bore the name xapalche, zapsticks, as our yard-stiçk (che == stick), and hilppiz, measuring rods (hil, a species of cane, and ppiz, to measure, Dicc. Motul).

On this as a unit, the customary land measure was based. It was the kaan, one shorter, hun kaan tah ox zapalche, a kaan of three zap, and one longer, hun kaan tah can zapalche, a kaan of four zap. The former is stated to be thirty-six 438fathoms square, the latter forty-eight fathoms square. Twenty kaan made a vinic, man, that amount of land being considered the area requisite to support one family in maize.

The uncertainty about this measure is increased by the evident error of Bishop Landa, or more probably his copyist, in making the vinic equal to 400 square feet, which even in the most favored soils would never support a family. He probably said “400 feet square,” which in that climate would be sufficient. The kaan is said by Spanish writers to be equal to the Mexican mecate, which contains 5184 square feet. I acknowledge, however, that I have not reconciled all the statements reported by authors about these land measures.

Greater measures of length are rarely mentioned. Journeys were measured by lub, which the Spaniards translated “leagues,” but by derivation it means “resting places,” and I have not ascertained that it had a fixed length.

The Mayas were given to the drawing of maps, and the towns had the boundaries of their common lands laid out in definite lines. I have manuscripts, some dated as early in 1542, which describe these town lands. In most of them only the courses are given, but not the distances. In one, a title to a domain in Acanceh, there are distances given, but in a measure quite unknown to me, sicina, preceded by the numeral and its termination indicating measures, hulucppiz sicina, eleven sicinas.^[399]

The maps indicate relative position only, and were evidently not designed by a scale, or laid off in proportion to distance. The distinguished Yucatecan antiquary, the Rev. 439Don Crescencio Carrillo, in his essay on the cartography of the ancient Mayas,^[400] apparently came to the same conclusion, as he does not mention any method of measurement.

I do not know of any measurements undertaken in Yucatan to ascertain the metrical standard employed by the ancient architects. It is true that Dr. Augustus LePlongeon asserts positively that they knew and used the metric system, and that the metre and its divisions are the only dimensions that can be applied to the remains of the edifices.^[401] But apart from the eccentricity of this statement, I do not see from Dr. LePlongeon’s own measurements that the metre is in any sense a common divisor for them.

From the linguistic evidence, I incline to believe that the oc, the foot, was their chief lineal unit. This name was also applied to the seventh day of the series of twenty which made up the Maya month; and there may be some connection between these facts and the frequent recurrence of the number seven in the details of their edifices.^[402]

THE CAKCHIQUELS.

The root-word for measuring length is, in Cakchiquel, et. Its primitive meaning is, a sign, a mark, a characteristic. From this root are derived the verbal etah, to measure length, to lay out a plan, to define limits; etal, a sign, mark, 440limit; etabal, measuring field; etamah, to know, i. e., to recognize the signs and characters of things; etamanizah, to cause to know, to teach, to instruct, etc.