In these languages, every element in the sentence, which is not incorporated in the verb, has, in fact, no syntax at all. The verbal exhausts all the formal portion of the language. The relations of the other words are intimated by their position. Thus _ni-tlagotlaz-nequia_, I wished to love, is literally “I, I shall love, I wished.” _Tlagotlaz_, is the first person singular of the future, _ni-nequia_, I wished, which is divided, and the future form inserted. The same expression may stand thus: _ni-c-nequia-tlagotlaz_, where the _c_ is an intercalated relative pronoun, and the literal rendering is, “I it wished, I shall love.” In the Lule language the construction with an infinitive is simply that the two verbs follow each other in the same person, as _caic tucuec_, “I am accustomed to eat,” literally, “I am acustomed,[TN-4] I eat.” None of these devices fullfils[TN-5] all the uses of the infinitive, and hence they are all inferior to it. In languages which lack formal elements, the deficiency must be supplied by the mind. Words are merely placed in juxtaposition, and their relationship guessed at. Thus, when a language constructs its cases merely by prefixing prepositions to the unaltered noun, there is no grammatical form; in the Mbaya language _e-tiboa_ is translated “through me,” but it is really “I, through;” _l’emani_, is rendered “he wishes,” but it is strictly “he, wish.” In such languages the same collocation of words often corresponds to quite different meanings, as the precise relation of the thoughts is not defined by any formal elements. This is well illustrated in the Tupi tongue. The word _uba_ is “father;” with the pronoun of the third person prefixed it is _tuba_, literally “he, father.” This may mean either “his father,” or “he is a father,” or “he has a father,” just as the sense of the rest of the sentence requires. Certainly a language which thus leaves confounded together ideas so distinct as these, is inferior to one which discriminates them; and this is why the formal elements of a tongue are so important to intellectual growth. The Tupis may be an energetic and skillful people, but with their language they can never take a position as masters in the realm of ideas. The absence of the passive in most, if not all, American tongues is supplied by similar inadequate collocations of words. In Huasteca, for example, _nana tanin tahjal_, is translated “I am treated by him;” actually it is, “I, me, treats he.” This is not a passive, but simply the idea of the Ego connected with the idea of another acting upon it. This is vastly below the level of inflected speech; for it cannot be too strenuously maintained that the grammatical relations of spoken language are the more perfect and favorable to intellectual growth, the more closely they correspond to the logical relations of thought.