isconnected
exclamations mean whole sentences in themselves.

A large part of the human race, notably, but not exclusively, the
aborigines of this continent, continued the tradition of this mode of
expression in the structure of their tongues long after the union of
thought and sound in audible speech had been brought to a high degree of
perfection.

Although I thus regard one of the most prominent peculiarities of
American languages as a survival from an exceedingly low stage of human
development, it by no means follows that this is an evidence of their
inferiority.

The Chinese, who made no effort to combine the primitive vocables into
one, but range them nakedly side by side, succeeded no better than the
American Indians; and there is not much beyond assertion to prove that
the Aryans, who, through their inflections, marked the relation of each
word in the sentence by numerous tags of case, gender, number, etc., got
any nearer the ideal perfection of language.

If we apply what is certainly a very fair test, to wit: the uses to
which a language is and can be put, I cannot see that a well-developed
American tongue, such as the Aztec or the Algonkin, in any way falls
short of, say French or English.

It is true that in many of these tongues there is no distinction made
between expressions, which with us are carefully separated, and are so
in thought. Thus, in the Tupi of Brazil and elsewhere, there is but one
word for the three expressions, "his father," "he is a father," and "he
has a father;" in many, the simple form of the verb may convey three
different ideas, as in Ute, where the word for "he seizes" means also
"the seizer," and as a descriptive noun, "a bear," the animal which
seizes.

This has been charged against these languages as a lack of
"differentiation." Grammatically this is so, but the same charge applies
with almost equal force to the English language, where the same word may
belong to any of four, five, even six parts of speech, dependent
entirely on the connection in which it is used.

As a set-off, the American languages avoid confusions of expression
which prevail in European tongues.

Thus in none of these latter, when I say "the love of God," "l'amour de
Dieu," "amor Dei," can you understand what I mean. You do not know
whether I intend the love which we have or should have toward God, or
God's love toward us. Yet in the Mexican language (and many other
American tongues) these two quit