Philological Proofs of the Original Unity and Recent Origin of the Human RaceJohnes, Arthur James
History
Philological Proofs of the Original Unity and Recent Origin of the Human Race
Johnes, Arthur James
Ethnology; Human beings -- Origin; Language and languages; Monogenism and polygenism
The following are examples of its use for the first person in the Greek:
_Singular._ _Plural._
_Amen_, used as an Inflection _Amen_, used as an Inflection
for “I.” for “We.”
_E-tupt_-OMĒN, “I was struck.” _Tupt_-OMEN, “We strike.”
_Tupt-oi_-MĒN, “Would that I
were struck.”
Ē-MĒN, “I had been.” Ē-MEN, “We were.”
These examples will serve to illustrate the proposition that in
inflections and other grammatical details the North American Indian
dialects partially coincide with individual Indo-European languages in the
same manner as those languages partially agree among themselves! It
remains to be pointed out that where these two groups of tongues differ,
the differences are such as time might have produced, and that they have
the same basis in common.
“Om, Amo, Amen,” are according to Dr. Prichard, pronouns confused with the
verb. It is an interesting fact, that “Amo”(153) is actually used as the
separate pronoun of the third person “He” in the dialect of the
“Blackfeet,” one of the N. American Indian Tribes to the west of the
Mississippi visited by Mr. Catlin! Now, as all pronouns were
originally(154) nouns, names for a “Human Being,” (see p. 13,) words of
this class must have been in the first instance applied indifferently to
all the three Persons. But in the course of time—1, In some languages
different nouns were appropriated to different Persons,—the most common
noun being applied to the First; (this accounts for the occurrence of “Amo
Om Amen,” probably forms of the most primitive(155) noun—in the first
Person of the Indo-European languages!)—2, In other tongues supplementary
pronouns were used to mark the requisite distinction of Persons, the most
common nouns being still used agreeably to previous habit,—(though no
longer of practical service)—in combination with the verb; (this is the
case in the Algonquyn dialects in which the same inflection is repeated in
all the three persons, and the requisite distinction of persons is made by
means of pronoun prefixes or supplementary pronouns, a distinction which,
in the Greek, &c., is made by varying the final inflections or original
pronouns, as in “Tupt-oi-mēn, Tupt-oi-o,” &c.)(156)
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The pronoun prefixes of these North American Indian dialects, which as
previously intimated, are common to the Welsh and the Hebrew, and other
Semetic tongues remain to be noticed.
ALGONQUYN PRONOUN PREFIXES.
(See previous specimens of Algonquyn Verbs.)
N’ “I” and “We.”
This is an abbreviated form used in conjunction with the verb as a prefix.
The pronoun in full is Ni Nin “I,” Ninou “We.” Both the pronoun itself and
the abbreviated form in which it is used as a prefix, occur in the Hebrew
in which the latter is used as a suffix!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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