The members of a group of languages called Yuman are spoken in a region
comprising a part of the peninsula of Lower California, the southern
extreme of California, and the western portion of Arizona. In this
group of languages ethnologists have hitherto included that spoken
by the Seri Indians and their congeners. But the inclusion of this
language rests apparently upon evidence drawn from data insufficient
in extent and largely imperfect and doubtful in character. In the
following pages this evidence is examined, and the conclusion is
reached that it does not warrant the inclusion of the Seri tongue in
the Yuman group. The same is true with regard to the Waïkuri (Guaicuri)
language, which has been erroneously, it would seem, included in the
Yuman stock; for, judging from present available data, it should remain
independent until further research shall decide whether it constitutes
a stock in itself or belongs to some other stock.
Moreover, it appears that the principle has been disregarded which
requires that, in making lexic comparisons to determine the fact
and degree of relationship between one language and another, those
vocables having admittedly a common linguistic tradition be carefully
and systematically studied before they are juxtaposed to those other
terms whose kinship with them is still matter for ascertainment. So
comparative lists have been prepared in accordance with this principle.
Now, one of the most important things revealed by the study of language
is that the course of anthropic linguistic development has been from
the use of polysematic demonstratives, or what are called pronominative
elements by Professor McGee, toward the evolution and differentiation
of parts of speech. These vocables, which occur in all languages, are
of prime importance in linguistic research because they are chiefly
vestigial in character. Presumptively embodying the indefinite
thought-clusters of the anthropoid stage in glottic evolution, they
project into the speech of the present (the anthropic stage) an outline
or epitome of that earlier pronominative plane of thought and speech
development. These pronominative elements represent a complex of ideas,
comprising person, place, direction, number, time, mode, gender, sex,
and case (or relation). In the Iroquoian tongue the pronominative
prefix _ra-_, “he”, signifies “one person of the anthropic gender, male
sex, singular number, nominative case, there, now”. Professor McGee in
The “Beginnings of Mathematics,” speaking of the paramount egoistic
basis of the thought of primitive men, well says: “They act and think
in terms of a dominant personality, always reducible to the Ego, and an
Ego drawn so large as to stand for person, place, time, mode of action,
and perhaps for raison d’être—it is Self, Here, Now, Thus, and Because.”
Now, there are in nature actions, bodies, properties, and qualities
requiring definite expression to give clearness and concision to
speech, and this need gradually led to the development and use of
conceptual expressions resulting in gradual restriction of the
multiplication of, and diminution in the number of, pronominative
elements. Speech became specific rather than monophrastic and
indefinite, and sought to express individual concepts by terms of
definite meaning rather than by phrases involving a plurality of
concepts and indefiniteness. The monophrasm or pronominative element
expressive of several individual ideas is resolved not by a division
of the body of the element, but rather by the addition of elements
denotive (though primarily connotive) of action, which had been
previously wholly or in part symbolized by the pronominative element,
or in part inferred from the situation.
Thus it may be seen that these pronominative elements, miscalled
pronouns, are not substitutes for nouns, but that the converse
statement is the truer one. These elements have been classed together
as forming a part of speech in the same category with the noun and the
verb; but it has been seen that the pronominative is not at all a part
of speech, involving semantically within itself the distinct concepts
of several so-called parts of speech. To make this plain, take from
the highly differentiated English tongue the following sentences: “_I_
will give _you_ to _her_. _What_ can _it_ be? The elk is one of the
most timid animals _that_ walk.” In the first, _I_, _you_, and _her_
respectively show the relation of the three persons indicated, not only
to the act of giving but also to the act of speaking, a function that
does not belong to nouns; without change of form they express what
is called person, number, case, and sex. And it would be extremely
difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to supply the nouns for which
_what_ in the second and _that_ in the third are substitutes; for in
the last, not even a noun and a conjunction will answer. Such in part
are the concepts for which the pronominative elements stand and which
give them such great vitality.
Along with these pronominative elements go the numerals, which were
primarily the products of a process of cancellation of common factors
from original expressions connoting the required number; and so when
once the abbreviated expressions became usual there was no disposition
to displace them, and increasing use making them more definite,
rendered them more and more permanent. This in brief is the chief cause
of the obstinate persistency of numerals in all known languages. An
examination of the accompanying lists of number-names will greatly
aid in understanding what is meant. The late Professor Whitney, when
discussing these elements in the Aryan or Indo-European family, uses
the following instructive language:
“When, however, we seek for words which are clearly and palpably
identical in all or nearly all the branches of the family, we have to
resort to certain special classes, as the numerals and the pronouns.
The reason of this it is not difficult to point out. For a large
portion of the objects, acts, and states, of the names for which
our languages are composed, it is comparatively easy to find new
designations. They offer numerous salient points for the names-giving
faculty to seize upon; the characteristic qualities, the analogies
with other things, which suggest and call forth synonymous or nearly
synonymous titles, are many. * * * But for the numerals and the
pronouns our languages have never shown any disposition to create a
synonymy. It was, as we may truly say, no easy task for the linguistic
faculty to arrive at a suitable sign for the ideas they convey; and
when the sign was once found, it maintained itself thenceforth in
use everywhere, without danger of replacement by any other of later
coinage. Hence, all the Indo-European nations, however widely they may
be separated and however discordant in manners and civilization, count
with the same words and use the same personal pronouns in individual
address—the same, with the exception, of course, of the changes which
phonetic corruption has wrought upon their forms.”[332]
[332] Language and the Study of Language, New York, 1874, pp. 194-195.
And it is on account of the great vitality and persistency of these two
groups of vocables that the pronominative elements and the numerals
have been given first place in the comparison between the Seri and the
Yuman tongues to determine relationship or want of relationship between
the two languages.