Note 1862 — Chapter VI · (continued 3)

A prominent feature is the process of uniting words lengthwise, so to speak, which gives a single utterance the import of a sentence. This characteristic of the American languages has been called polysynthetic, incorporative, holophrastic, aggregative, and agglutinative. H. H. Bancroft instances the word for letter-postage in Aztec as being “Amatlacuilolitquitcatlaxtlahuilli,” which really signifies by its component parts, “payment received for carrying a paper on which something is written.” Cf. Brinton’s On polysynthesism and incorporation as characteristic of American languages (Philad., 1885).