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The peculiarity of the Eskimo language as polysynthetic,
as well known, is exhibited in the construction of nouns and
verbs by which other classes of words are made almost
unnecessary and ONE WORD IS ABLE TO EXPRESS A WHOLE
SENTENCE INCLUDING SUBORDINATE SENTENCES. It is especially
through the Greenland dialect, and in some degree the
Labradorian that this peculiarity of the language has been thoroughly
studied and made known. But it must be regarded as
impossible that a system which evinces such acute and logical thought
as that exhibited in the rules of the Greenland grammar, should
have been separately invented by the tribe who peopled
Greenland. It is not to be doubted that in the main the grammars
of the other dialects bear the same character as that of
Greenland.
The division of the tribes proposed in the preceding
chapter is also applicable in treating of the dialects. Here of
course we are dependent on the existence of sufficient
vocabularies. As to the Western Eskimo the vocabularies in our
possession are headed by about 10 names of tribes, nearly, but
not exactly, agreeing with those given before. But I have
preferred summing them up under 3 classes: Northern, Southern
and Asiatic. For several reasons this division seems quite
natural. Only as regards a tribe called Ekogmut and now
classed with the Southern, I was somewhat in doubt. Of the
Mackenzie and the Labradorian only single glossaries exist
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