“A few years ago, I read before the Berlin Academy a memoir, which has not been printed, in which I compared a number of American languages with each other, solely with regard to the manner in which they express the verb as uniting the subject with the attribute in the proposition, and from this point of view I assigned them to various classes. As this trait proves to what degree a language possesses grammatical forms, or is near to possessing them, it is decisive of the whole grammar of a tongue.” On reading the memoir, I was so much impressed with the acuteness and justness of its analysis of American verbal forms that I prepared the translation which I now submit. In the more recent studies of the American verb which have appeared from the pens of Friedrich Müller, J. Hammond Trumbull and Lucien Adam, we have the same central element of speech subjected to critical investigation at able hands. But it seems to me that none of them has approached the topic with the broad, philosophic conceptions which impress the reader in this essay of Humboldt’s. Although sixty years and more have elapsed since it was written, I am confident that it will provide ample food for thought to the earnest student of language. _On the Verb in American Languages. By Wilhelm von Humboldt[TN-6] Translated from the unpublished original. By D. G. Brinton, M.D._ You recently had the goodness to give an appreciative hearing to my essay on The Origin of Grammatical Forms. I desire to-day to apply the principles which I then stated in general to a particular grammatical point through a series of languages. I choose those of America as best suited to such a purpose, and select the Verb as the most important part of speech, and the central point of every language. Without entering into an analysis of the different parts of the verb, I shall confine myself to that which constitutes its peculiar verbal character--the union of the subject and predicate of the sentence by means of the notion of Being. This alone forms the essence of the verb; all other relations, as of persons, tenses, modes and classes, are merely secondary properties. The question to be answered is therefore:-- Through what form of grammatical notation do the languages under consideration indicate that subject and predicate are to be united by means of the notion of Being? I believe I have shown with sufficient clearness that a language may have a great diversity of apparent forms, and may express all grammatical relations with definiteness, and yet when taken as a whole it may lack true grammatical form. From this arises an essential and real graduated difference between languages. This difference, however, has nothing to do with the question whether particular languages employ exclusively agglutination or inflection, as all began with agglutination; but in the languages of the higher class, it became in its effects on the mind, identical with inflection.