The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt / With the Translation of an Unpublished Memoir by Him on the American Verb

A scholarly exposition presents Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language applied to the indigenous languages of the Americas, pairing a systematic outline of grammatical theory with a translated unpublished memoir on verb morphology. It surveys definitions and psychological origins of language; primitive roots and grammatical categories; formal and material elements; processes of development; internal form and criteria of rank; incorporation and its psychological effects; and number phenomena such as the dual. The memoir classifies verbal forms by how the notion of being is expressed, analyzes Maya verb structure, treats separability and attachment of person, tense and mode markers, and concludes with translator’s notes on the languages discussed.