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Pronouns
in Literature
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Pronouns in Literature

‘Jakobson taught us to think of pronouns as shifters, but the case-studies and


theoretical reflections assembled in this volume makes it clearer than ever how
very shifty they are. Read these essays to see how much hinges on them in plays,
poems and prose narratives both natural and unnatural. They matter; she, he, it
matters; I, you, we matter.’
—Brian McHale, The Ohio State University, USA and
Editor of Poetics Today

‘This work masterfully evidences the centrality of personal pronouns in posi-


tioning and engaging readers. It foregrounds the ethical and poetical implica-
tions of these amazingly dynamic tools which can both challenge social world
views and remap genre boundaries. Reading this work will offer innovative theo-
retical directions in which to explore this fascinating territory.’
—Sandrine Sorlin, Professor of English Language and Linguistics,
Aix-Marseille University, France

‘Pronouns play a key part in models of narrative and discourse processing; yet,
Pronouns in Literature: Positions and Perspectives in Language is the first volume to
make them an object of careful attention in their own right. Through a multidis-
ciplinary set of studies, the volume brings into focus the ways in which genres,
stylistic effects, and ontological tensions can be shaped by pronoun choice, push-
ing scholars to home in more closely on these small but powerful words.’
—Chantelle Warner, Associate Professor,
University of Arizona, USA

‘Pronouns in Literature: Positions and Perspectives in Language is an impressive


collection which both showcases the liveliest current scholarship in this area
and establishes exciting new pathways for future research. The variety of per-
spectives it proposes is dazzlingly rich, both in terms of the range of text types
covered, and the interdisciplinary ways in which they are tackled. The pro-
nouns themselves are versatile and dynamic, ambiguous and ever-shifting. This
stimulating, superbly edited volume will be a lodestone for all those fascinated
by the power of pronouns to shape the way that we (which may or may not
include you) read.’
—Joe Bray, Professor, University of Sheffield, UK
‘This collection makes an extremely important contribution to our understand-
ing of the roles of pronouns in literary texts. It contains a huge number of
important insights from a wide range of world-leading experts. It is not only
essential reading for researchers investigating pronouns and how they are used.
It is a must-read for anybody with an interest in language, literature and how we
produce, experience and respond to texts.’
—Billy Clark, Associate Professor in English Language and
Linguistics, Middlesex University, UK
Alison Gibbons • Andrea Macrae
Editors

Pronouns in
Literature
Positions and Perspectives in
Language
Editors
Alison Gibbons Andrea Macrae
Department of Humanities Department of English Literature
Sheffield Hallam University and Modern Languages
Sheffield, UK Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, UK

ISBN 978-1-349-95316-5    ISBN 978-1-349-95317-2 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95317-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017960068

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018


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with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Permissions

All literary works and extracts discussed in this book are included in
accordance with fair use. Additionally, permission was obtained for the
reproduction of two poems by Langston Hughes as follows:

“Youth,” and “I, Too” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON


HUGHES by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David
Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston
Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House
LLC. All rights reserved.

v
Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the original book


proposal for their critical insight and enthusiasm for the project. Our
thinking—as well as those of many of our contributors—has benefitted
from interactions in and engagement with scholarly associations, particu-
larly the European Narratology Network (ENN), the International
Association of Literary Semantics (IALS), the International Society for
the Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL), the International Society for
the Study of Narrative (ISSN), and the Poetics And Linguistics Association
(PALA).

vii
Contents

1 Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns in Literature:


The State of the Subject   1
Alison Gibbons and Andrea Macrae

2 “I Am Thy Father’s Spirit”: The First-­Person Pronoun


and the Rhetoric of Identity in Hamlet  15
Katie Wales

3 “We Have Tomorrow Bright Before Us Like a Flame”:


Pronouns, Enactors, and Cross-Writing in The Dream
Keeper and Other Poems  33
Marcello Giovanelli

4 Positioning the Reader in Post-­Apartheid Literature


of Trauma: I and You in Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story  55
Andrea Macrae

5 Autonarration, I, and Odd Address in Ben Lerner’s


Autofictional Novel 10:04  75
Alison Gibbons

ix
x Contents

6 Placements and Functions of Brief Second-Person


Passages in Fiction  97
Joshua Parker

7 On the Interpretive Effects of Double Perspective


in Genitive Constructions 113
Helen de Hoop and Kim Schreurs

8 
They-Narratives 131
Jan Alber

9 The Observing We in Literary Representations of


Neglect and Social Alienation: Types of Narrator
Involvement in Janice Galloway’s ‘Scenes from the
Life No. 26: The Community and the Senior Citizen’
and Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs 151
Catherine Emmott

10 Let Us Tell You Our Story: We-Narration and Its


Pronominal Peculiarities 171
Monika Fludernik

11 Multi-Teller and Multi-Voiced Stories: The Poetics


and Politics of Pronouns 193
Marina Grishakova

12 Pronouns in Literary Fiction as Inventive Discourse 217


Henrik Skov Nielsen

13 Postscript: Unusual Voices and Multiple Identities 235


Brian Richardson
Contents
   xi

R
 eferences 245

Index 269
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Notes on Contributors

Jan Alber is Professor of English Literature and Cognition at RWTH Aachen


University, Germany, and President of the International Society for the Study of
Narrative (ISSN). He is the author of Narrating the Prison (Cambria Press,
2007) and Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama
(University of Nebraska Press, 2016). Alber received fellowships and research
grants from the British Academy, the German Research Foundation, and the
Humboldt Foundation. In 2013, the German Association of University Teachers
of English awarded him the prize for the best Habilitation written between 2011
and 2013. Between 2014 and 2016, he worked as a COFUND (Marie-Curie)
Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark.
Catherine Emmott is Reader in English Language and Linguistics at the
University of Glasgow, UK. Her research interests mainly focus on the cognitive
study of narrative texts, using approaches from linguistics, stylistics, literary
studies, psychology and artificial intelligence. She is author of the books
Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective (Oxford University Press,
1997) and Mind, Brain and Narrative (with Anthony J. Sanford, Cambridge
University Press, 2012), in addition to articles on cognitive stylistics, anaphora
and referential form.
Monika Fludernik is Professor of English Literature at the University of
Freiburg, Germany. She is also the director of the graduate school Factual and
Fictional Narration (GRK 1767). Her major fields of interest include narratol-
ogy, postcolonial studies, ‘Law and Literature’ and eighteenth-century aesthetics.

xiii
xiv Notes on Contributors

She is the author of The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction (1993),
An Introduction to Narratology (2009) and the award-winning Towards a ‘Natural’
Narratology (1996). Monika Fludernik has edited and co-edited several volumes
of essays, including Hybridity and Postcolonialism: Twentieth-Century Indian
Literature (1998), In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between
(2004), Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on Literary Metaphor
(2011) and Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature (2014). Her 1994
special issue in the journal Style was one of the first major contributions to
second-person narrative. In progress is the Handbook Narrative Factuality,
co-edited with Marie-Laure Ryan.
Alison Gibbons is a Reader in Contemporary Stylistics at Sheffield Hallam
University, UK. She is the author of Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental
Literature (Routledge, 2012), co-author of Contemporary Stylistics: Language,
Interpretation, Cognition (EUP, 2018), and co-editor of Mark Z. Danielewski
(MUP, 2011), the Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature (Routledge,
2012), and Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Alison Gibbon’s research consistently pursues a
stylistic, cognitive-poetic approach to contemporary fiction and innovative
forms of narrative. Her research is currently focused on autofiction, metamod-
ernist fiction, fiction about the Arab Spring, and empirical reception.
Marcello Giovanelli is Senior Lecturer at Aston University, UK where he is
Programme Director for English Literature. He has research interests in applica-
tions of Text World Theory and Cognitive Grammar to literary discourse and,
more generally, in pedagogical and descriptive stylistics and in English educa-
tion. Recent books include Text World Theory and Keats’ Poetry (Bloomsbury,
2013), Teaching Grammar, Structure and Meaning (Routledge, 2014), and
Knowing About Language (Routledge, 2016) as well as publications in major
international journals.
Marina Grishakova is Professor of Literary Theory at the Institute of
Cultural Research, University of Tartu, Estonia. She is the author of The
Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative Strategies
and Cultural Frames (2nd ed. 2012), and a co-editor of Intermediality and
Storytelling (with M.-L. Ryan, De Gruyter, 2010), Theoretical Schools and
Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy
(Routledge, 2015) and Cognition and Narrative Complexity (forthcoming,
University of Nebraska Press). Her articles have appeared in Narrative, Sign
Systems Studies, Revue de littérature comparée and international volumes, such as
Notes on Contributors
   xv

Strange Voices in Narrative Fiction (2011), Disputable Core Concepts in


Narrative Theory (2012), Literature, History and Cognition (2014), Intersections,
Interferences, Interdisciplines: Literature with Other Arts (2014), Blackwell
Companion to Literary Theory (2017).
Helen de Hoop is Professor of Theoretical Linguistics at the Radboud
University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research interests include pronouns,
modality, evidentiality, and the combination of linguistics and literary studies.
She was one of the guest editors of a special issue of the Journal of Literary
Semantics on pronouns and perspective in literature (2014).
Andrea Macrae is a Senior Lecturer in Stylistics at Oxford Brookes University,
UK. She specialises in deixis and has published work on pronouns in the Journal
of Literary Semantics (2010), the journal Diegesis (2016), and in The Pragmatics
of Personal Pronouns (Gardelle and Sorlin, John Benjamins, 2015) and Texts and
Minds (Kwiatkowska, Peter Lang, 2012). She teaches stylistics, cognitive poetics,
world literature and metafiction.
Henrik Skov Nielsen is professor at Aarhus Universitet, Denmark and
guest professor at Tampere University, Finland. He is head of the “Narrative
Research Lab” (http://www.nordisk.au.dk/forskningscentre/nrl) and “Centre
for Fictionality Studies” (http://fictionality.au.dk/). He can be reached by email
at [email protected].
Joshua Parker is an assistant professor of American studies at the University of
Salzburg, Austria, with interests in place and space in American literature, trans-
atlantic relations and narrative theory. His work in narrative theory includes
studies of the development of second-person passages in fiction, from the eigh-
teenth- to twenty-first century, in French and in English, with a focus on con-
temporary American literature, and his publications include Ecrire son lecteur:
L’évolution de la deuxième personne (Omniscriptum, 2012) and Tales of Berlin in
American Literature up to the 21st Century (Brill-Rodopi, 2016).
Brian Richardson is Professor of English at the University of Maryland, USA,
and a past president of the International Society for the Study of Narrative. His
primary interests are in narrative theory, international modernism, postmodern
fiction, and the history of the novel. He has written extensively on Conrad,
Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett, and his focus on unusual, experimental, and antireal-
ist texts led him to found the field of unnatural narratology. He is the author of
Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice (2015), Unnatural Voices:
Extreme Narration in Modern and Postmodern Fiction (2006), and Unlikely
xvi Notes on Contributors

Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative (1997). He is the co-author
of Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (2012) and editor of
Narrative Beginnings (2008) and Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Plot, Time,
Closure and Frames (2002). He is completing a theoretical study of narrative
beginnings, middles, and endings.
Kim Schreurs obtained her bachelor’s degree in Dutch language and culture at
the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. For her research project
within the Radboud Honours Academy, she combined linguistics and literary
studies. Currently she is a postgraduate student of Literary Studies at the
Radboud University Nijmegen, and engaged in a research project about what
characteristics of different genres of narratives attract readers.
Katie Wales is a Special Professor in English at the University of Nottingham,
UK. She has previously held Chairs in English Language and Literature at Royal
Holloway University of London, and the universities of Leeds and Sheffield.
Relevant publications include A Dictionary of Stylistics (3rd edition 2011);
Personal Pronouns in Present-day English (1996) and Reading Shakespeare’s
Dramatic Language (2001) (joint editor). She is a co-founder of the Poetics and
Linguistics Association and a member of the editorial board of its journal
Language and Literature.
List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Broad text-world diagram for ‘I, Too’ 45


Fig. 3.2 Broad text-world diagram for ‘Youth’ 47
Fig. 5.1 Genette’s voice relations for autofiction 78
Fig. 5.2 Lejeune’s chart of fictional and autobiographical pacts 79
Fig. 7.1 Type of reference to the man, woman and girl in Menuet121

xvii
List of Tables

Table 7.1 Type of reference to the man, woman and girl in Menuet120
Table 7.2 Use of genitive constructions with a double perspective 121
Table 7.3 Summary of factor and reliability analysis 125
Table 7.4 Means and standard deviations (between brackets)
for empathy, narrative engagement and text-to-self
connection126
Table 10.1 Exclusive and inclusive we174

xix
1
Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns
in Literature: The State of the Subject
Alison Gibbons and Andrea Macrae

1.1 Introduction: Pronouns in Literature


Pronouns in Literature: Positions and Perspectives in Language advances
understanding of the role of pronouns in literary contexts. It brings
together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, includ-
ing world-leading experts, and offers cutting-edge insights into the func-
tions and effects of pronouns in literary texts. The book engages with a
breadth of text-types, including poetry, drama, and prose from different
periods and regions, in English and in translation. It progresses recent
interest in and accounts of narrative voices and articulations of perspec-
tive, by addressing an area which has, historically and canonically, been
less well attended to and explored.

A. Gibbons (*)
Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
A. Macrae
Department of English Literature and Modern Languages,
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 1


A. Gibbons, A. Macrae (eds.), Pronouns in Literature,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95317-2_1
2 A. Gibbons and A. Macrae

This chapter serves both as an introduction to the volume and an up-­


to-­date review of the study of pronouns in literature. Firstly, we briefly
discuss the kinds of effects to which pronouns contribute in literary con-
texts. In doing so, we hope to illustrate their interpretative significance
and begin to reveal the complex network of functions pronouns can play
a part in. This complexity leads us into the necessarily diverse array of
scholarship which has begun to engage with and analyse this functioning
over the last 100 years. The next section of the introduction, Sect. 1.2,
provides a historical overview of this scholarship, and outlines the latest
developments and innovations in research into pronouns across a range
of disciplines (including psychology, cognitive studies, stylistics, linguis-
tics, narratology, and literary criticism). Finally, in Sect. 1.3, the chapter
introduces the structural logic of the volume, providing a brief summary
of each contribution and highlighting the themes arching through the
chapters.
Pronouns play a powerful and essential role in several interconnected
literary features and their related effects. Perhaps most significantly, pro-
noun use is a fundamental part of the construction and manipulation of
narratorial or poetic voices (or voices of speakers, in drama). In fiction,
for example, I, you, we, they, she, he, it, etc. are used delineate a narrator’s
subject position in relation to objects/others. In effect, the pronoun
simultaneously determines, designates, identifies, refers to and (re-)
affirms a particular narratorial role and perceptual locus. Accordingly, it
influences readers’ perceptions of the positions of other characters and/or
things in relation to that narrator’s role and locus.
Across literary text-types, pronouns are a key part of generating rhe-
torical structures of positioning, interaction and address within and
across the diegetic and extradiegetic levels of narrative (to use Genette’s
terminology), or different text-worlds (to use Text World Theory concep-
tualisations). A narratorial voice often works as a focalising ‘window’—a
particular, positioned perspective on fictional worlds. The reader’s pro-
cessing and perception of the fictional world is mediated, and to some
extent manipulated, by the nature of this positioned perspective.
Pronouns thereby contribute to readers’ narrative comprehension and
dynamic conceptual world-building (Emmott 1997; Gavins 2007).
Partly through the focalising function of a particular pronoun-designated
Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns in Literature: The State… 3

position, the reader may be led to identify with, or in other ways relate to,
that position. Pronouns can therefore affect readers’ empathetic,
­emotional and ideological relations with and responses to narratorial,
poetic and other speaking voices and characters in literature.
Many aspects of these literary features and effects have received critical
attention across a range of disciplines within literary study. Little of this
literary critical and theoretical scholarship, however, has addressed the
role of pronouns, specifically, in generating these features and effects. The
chapters in this volume are rooted in the interconnected fields of stylis-
tics, cognitive poetics, narratology, rhetoric and theoretical, applied and
empirical linguistics. Some also draw on aspects of literary pragmatics
and corpus stylistics. As this book demonstrates, and as the next section
explains, contemporary stylistic and narratological scholarship offers the
most advanced tools for investigating the positions and perspectives cre-
ated by pronouns, and drawing out and developing new insights into
their effects on readerly interpretation and experience.

1.2 The State of the Subject


The theoretical foundations of this book include work on pronouns in
linguistic theory and work on the role of pronouns within literary fea-
tures across a range of literary and cognitive narratological publications.
Linguistic theory on the referential and deictic functioning of pronouns
began with Jespersen (1924) and Bühler (1934) in the first half of the
twentieth century, and was picked up Jakobson in his key 1956 paper
(published in 1971). Deictic theory of pronouns was then significantly
developed in the latter half of the twentieth century by Benveniste (1971
[1966]) Lyons (1977), Jarvella and Klein (1982), Rauh (1983) and
Fludernik (1991), all of whom draw explicitly on those key early works.
Much of this linguistic work is focused on deixis as a whole: attention
to pronouns tends to occur only in sections, though often as part of key
theoretical arguments explicating deixis more broadly. Jakobson’s cate-
gory of ‘shifters’ is a case in point, as captured by Fludernik’s (1991) dis-
cussion. Fludernik addresses some theoretical entanglements within the
concepts of shifters and shifting, tracing the evolution of the concepts
4 A. Gibbons and A. Macrae

from Jespersen and Jakobson, via Burk’s rendering of Peirce’s indexical


symbols, to Benveniste’s alignment of the ‘shifter’ function with personal
pronouns. This becomes a discussion of deixis at large, during which she
illustrates “the asymmetry between the first and the second person” and
demonstrates that “deictic categories as well as empathy processes operate
on a scale model of expansion from the realm of speaker’s locus of subjec-
tivity to that of the addressee and of a third person” (1991: 222).
Fludernik’s essay reflects the manner in which key advances on the use
and functioning of pronouns are often deeply embroiled within discus-
sions of deixis.
Literary narratology has tended to approach pronoun use from a dif-
ferent angle, though the timeline of attention is not dissimilar. The ques-
tions of ‘who sees’ and ‘who speaks’, and the relationship between them,
was most explicitly raised by Genette (1980). These questions, bound up
with concepts of voice, perspective and focalisation, were further explored,
delineated and reformulated by Bal (1997 [1985]), Chatman (1980
[1978], 1990), Genette (1988), Margolin (1986/1987, 1991) and
Rimmon-Kenan (2002 [1983]). In all of this work, discussion of pro-
noun use is prominent. At the same time as Gisa Rauh was putting
together Essays on Deixis (1983), Ann Banfield was publishing Unspeakable
Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction (1982),
a seminal and controversial work addressing voice, narration and the rela-
tive markedness and functioning of first- and second-person modes, to
which Fludernik’s (1993) The Fictions of Language and the Languages of
Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness is in
some ways a response.
The 1994 issue of Style (volume 28, issue 3), edited by Fludernik, pre-
sented a turn in the literary narratological discussion. The journal focussed
on second-person narratives, though its exploration of odd address, mul-
tiple narrators and the like inevitably involved intertwined analysis of
first person and other forms. In doing so, it brought pronoun use into the
foreground, panning outward to related broader questions of focalisa-
tion. A cotemporaneous interest developed, from an experiential perspec-
tive, in ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ narrative situations (Fludernik 1996;
Richardson 2006; Hansen et al. 2011; Alber et al. 2013; and, from a
different angle, McHale 1987) and, relatedly, apostrophic and interactive
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Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns in Literature: The State… 5

narratives (Kacandes 1993, 1994, 2001; Ryan 2001), with Hühn et al.’s
(2009) collection somewhat tying these interests together. While
Kacandes, McHale and Ryan give specific attention to pronouns within
this wave of narrative theory, many of the other contributing theorists,
though often discussing the likes of second-person narration and multi-
person narration, let pronouns fall back into the background of a bigger
picture of experimental narratives and experiential narratology.
Straddling linguistic and literary study, two major edited collections
arose in 1995: Green’s New Essays in Deixis: Discourse, Narrative, Literature
and Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Scientific Perspective, edited by
Duchan et al. Green’s collection explores deixis in narrative, and includes
influential work on the function of pronouns in constructing the narrat-
ing voice in fiction and the poetic persona in poetry. Duchan et al. add
cognitive and computational insight to the foundational linguistic theory
of deixis, developing it in relation to deictic functioning within literature.
Building directly on the original work of Bühler (particularly his concept
of deixis am phantasma), the early chapters in Duchan et al. represent
formative thinking on deictic shifting (with a further iteration of
Jespersen’s ‘shifters’), and related aspects such as deictic fields and edge-
work, in literary contexts. This heritage directly informs cognitive-poetic
discussions of pronouns in literature.
Partly following Emmott’s (1997) work on the role of pronouns in
narrative comprehension, Stockwell (2000, 2002) addresses the deictic
functioning of pronouns in literature within his category of perceptual
deixis, and his augmentation of Duchan et al.’s concept of deictic shift-
ing. McIntyre (2006) in turn further advances this work in applying it to
drama, and Gavins (2007; following Werth 1999) reorients deictic work
on pronouns in her development of Text World Theory (see also Gibbons
2012; Giovanelli 2013). Herman (2002) draws upon the ideas of Duchan
et al. and related cognitive narratology to expand the theory of deixis in
literary narrative, and, significantly, to build on the seminal issue of Style
by extrapolating different functions of you.
Recent empirical investigations into the role of pronouns in compre-
hension of texts, in comprehension of perspective and in evocation of
reader empathy, amongst other areas—presenting complex and some-
times contrasting conflicting conclusions—can be found in Brunyé et al.
6 A. Gibbons and A. Macrae

(2009, 2011), Macrae (2016), Rall and Harris (2000), Sanford and
Emmott (2012), Van Peer and Chatman (2001), Whiteley (2011), and in
a relatively rare exploration of deixis in poetry by Jeffries (2008).
Developments in empirical research methods (e.g. Busselle and Bilandzic
2009) and cognitive and experiential theories of literary reading (e.g.
Burke 2010; Popova 2015; Harrison 2017) promise further advancement
in insights in readers’ experiences of pronouns in literature.
Two other approaches to pronoun use in literary and non-literary texts
warrant mention. Valuable work continues in the study of pronouns,
specifically, in non-literary discourse types. Wales’ (1996) Personal
Pronouns in Present-day English provides an analysis of aspects of pronoun
use in everyday spoken and written discourse, while Gardelle and Sorlin’s
collection The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns presents pragmatic and
socio-linguistic approaches to pronoun use in predominantly non-­literary
texts. Other pragmatic work on aspects of perspective in literary texts,
addressing pronoun use to a smaller extent, includes Sell (1991) and
Black (2005). Lastly, and most recently, with developments in computa-
tional corpus software, work within corpus stylistics which in part
explores pronoun use is coming to the fore, including Demjen (2015),
Mahlberg (2013) and Murphy (2015).
This section has provided an overview of the theoretical foundations of
the essays in this book, and the research context within which it sits. The
next section outlines the chapters of this volume and the contributions
each makes to the advancement of scholarship on pronouns in literature.

1.3 Positions and Perspectives in This Volume


This volume charts the functions and effects of pronouns in literary con-
texts. It starts with explorations of the first-person pronoun in drama and
poetry, and moves into studies concerning the subject dynamics of I, you,
and other forms of odd-address in contemporary prose, before focusing
on brief second-person passages in fiction. The book then reflects on the
way in which linguistic structures might simultaneously disperse focalisa-
tion between two subjects. Next, plural modes of narration such as We-,
They- and polyvocal narratives are discussed. Having considered each of
Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns in Literature: The State… 7

these pronominal narrative modes in turn, the volume lastly debates the
functional constraints of pronouns in fictional contexts. In this section,
we briefly spotlight each chapter and the advancement to knowledge that
each contributor offers to the study of pronouns in literature.
In her contribution (Chap. 2), Katie Wales—author of the seminal
book Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English (1996)—delivers a rhetori-
cal stylistic analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Wales concentrates
on the first-person pronoun I as used in scenes involving the ghost of
Hamlet’s father in Act I of the play. Her analysis shows that whilst the
pronouns thou, he, and it are employed apostrophically to address the
ghost, they problematise and ‘other’ it; when the ghost finally does speak,
the powerful use of first-person I and me—used in prosopopoeia; that is,
as a rhetorical strategy which personifies an inanimate object by giving it
the ability to speak—finally and dramatically reveal the true identity of
the ghost. Overall, Wales’ chapter develops the study of pronoun usage in
early modern drama particularly since, whilst the pronouns thou and you
(as instances of narrative apostrophe) have been the subject of many
influential studies, I has been hitherto neglected.
Marcello Giovanelli (in Chap. 3) is also interested in first-person pro-
nouns. His chapter explores I and We in two poems—‘I, Too’ and
‘Youth’—by the twentieth century poet Langston Hughes, whose work
he contextualises as part of the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement.
His approach employs the cognitive-poetic framework of Text World
Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007), which uses the text-as-world meta-
phor to explain the ways in which readers construct mental representa-
tions. Building on work in his monograph Text World Theory and Keats’
Poetry (2013), Giovanelli demonstrates that the Text World Theory con-
cept of enactors (Emmott 1997)—the cognitive realisations of various
different indices of a referent (e.g. past, present, and future selves of a
single character)—enables readers to track and update their understand-
ing of characters across a text. Moreover, because Giovanelli frames
Hughes’ two poems as examples of cross-writing, his analysis of the
poems’ enactors further accounts for the potentially different interpreta-
tions of adult and child readerships.
Both Andrea Macrae and Alison Gibbons explore pronouns in
contemporary fiction, considering how they position readers and the
8 A. Gibbons and A. Macrae

interpretive affect and effects which result from such positionings. Macrae
(Chap. 4) considers how pronominal positionings can reflect agency and
complicity within postcolonial narratives of trauma. Macrae’s chapter,
which uses Zoë Wicomb’s historiographic, post-apartheid novel David’s
Story (2001) as its case study, therefore has an ethico-political dimension.
In Chap. 5, Gibbons also considers metafictional strategies but in the
context of autofiction, a genre that distorts the ontological boundaries
between autobiography and fiction. Gibbons’ work has consistently
explored how textual and stylistic features negotiate and blur the onto-
logical divide between reality and virtuality and her monograph
Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature (2012) is particu-
larly interested in the effect of pronouns—alongside demonstratives,
paratexts, and images—in multimodal contexts on world creation. In
this volume, and concentrating on Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014), Gibbons
develops what she calls a “Cognitive-Stylistic Model of Autonarration” to
account for the devices, centrally including pronouns, which trouble the
distinction between fact and fiction in contemporary autofictions.
Chapter 6 by Joshua Parker and Chap. 7 by Helen de Hoop and Kim
Schreurs both pay attention to diffusions of focalisation and narration.
Parker draws on Genette’s narratological model of ontological levels
(1980, 1988). In doing so, he hones in on the way in which narrative uses
of you can function metaleptically; that is, to address a you who exists on
a conventionally distinct narrative level (e.g. a narrator in the fiction
appears to speak to a reader in reality). Rather than focusing on sustained
cases of second-person fiction, Parker offers an original approach to you
by considering its impact when it appears in the introductions, intermit-
tent passages, and conclusions of fictions that are otherwise predomi-
nantly written in traditional third- or first-person narration.
Helen de Hoop—who edited the Journal of Literary Semantics’ special
issue on ‘Person and Perspective in Language and Literature’ (Volume 43,
Issue 2; see Hogeweg et al. 2014)—has previously explored the use of
second-person pronouns in literature using quantitative analysis (de
Hoop and Hogeweg 2014). De Hoop and Schreurs, in their collaborative
contribution to this volume, investigate genitive constructions, which
articulate a linguistic relationship of possession (or close association)
between two nouns (e.g. our friend). To do so, they employ both corpus
Positions and Perspectives on Pronouns in Literature: The State… 9

and experimental methods to discover the effect of genitive constructions


on shifts in perspective and on readers’ narrative engagement.
The chapters in the latter half of the volume—by Jan Alber, Catherine
Emmott, Monika Fludernik, and Marina Grishakova—all focus on plu-
rality of voice in narration. In Chap. 8, Alber—a leading figure in the
study of pronoun use in unnatural narratives (see Alber 2015, 2016;
Alber et al. 2013)—deals with the rather rare phenomenon of third-­
person plural narration. His chapter demonstrates that they-narratives
can work to emphasise the relationships between individual characters
and larger social groups and, although not inherently ideological, can
consequently articulate a social world-view. Emmott’s contribution
(Chap. 9) also links pronouns and narrative voice to depictions of social
structures. Whilst Emmott’s previous research advanced knowledge about
the cognitive-psychological processing of pronouns (1997; Sanford and
Emmott 2012), in this volume she explores the role of pronouns in
expressing issues of neglect and alienation in we-narration.
Monika Fludernik’s books The Fictions of Language and the Languages
of Fiction (1993) and Towards a “Natural” Narratology (1996) pioneered
the study of pronouns in literature, and her articles on second-person fic-
tions initiated stylistic and narratological examinations into narrative
pronouns in experimental writing. In Chap. 10, Fludernik explores the
heterogeneity of we-narration, specifically the tension between inclusive
and exclusive we, generality and individuality, shared and individual
experience. Following in Chap. 11, Marina Grishakova—whose research
has explored the representation of unnatural or “virtual” voices (2011)
and the textual constructions of authors in fiction (2012)—connects
polyvocal forms of narration (extended subjectivity, we-narration and
what Grishakova refers to as “liminal deixis”) to readers’ active world-­
making processes. In doing so, she argues that the poetics of pronouns
can be used to question political and social categories.
Henrik Skov Nielsen, in Chap. 12, also poses questions. These centre
on the workings of pronouns in literary contexts vs. non-fictional conver-
sational discourse. Nielsen—whose research has previously centred on
unnatural narratives and fictionality (2011, 2014, 2016; Nielsen et al.
2015)—takes a rhetorical perspective on pronouns, contending that lit-
erary discourse should be understood as invented. This position leads
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other parts of the northwest regions. Its present aggregate
population has been estimated the present year, at eight hundred
and ninety-five, say nine hundred souls, numbering those only who
are permanently located in its valley.—What quantity of furs and
peltries is annually got from it, and what amount of Indian goods are
required to pay for them, are questions which might be ascertained,
with general accuracy, by consulting official records. But it is
sufficient for the purposes of moral enquiry, to remark, that both the
supplies and the returns, are less than they were in former years,
and that there is a declension in the trade, which must at length
produce a migration of the Indians, or induce them to become
agriculturists. The fate that has overtaken other tribes, enjoying a
more southerly position, must inevitably overtake these bands. And
the period will probably arrive earlier, than it might be anticipated.
They occupy a portion of the Mississippi valley, which is adapted for
agriculture. Many parts of it, possess a rich soil, and are well
timbered. Other portions are prairie land, suited for pasturage. Its
most arid tracts abound in pine, and there is hardly a stream, of its
many tributaries which does not afford numerous eligible seats for
saw and grist mills. Hunting seems the only occupation, which
cannot be a permanent one. But,

“While thus the chase declines, and herds depart,


And heaven in prospect, dooms his favorite art,
No care of lands or flocks prepares his mind,
To mend his fortunes, and to save his kind.”
The portage from the St. Croix to the Burntwood, begins at the
head of (the Upper) lake St. Croix. It lies over an elevated sandy
pine ridge, which divides the two streams. The distance which the
canoes and packages require to be carried, is 3,350 yards, or nearly
two miles. On the left hand, in carrying from the St. Croix, there is a
deep tamerac valley, which is said to afford the head springs of both
streams. On the right, is seen, at some distance, a small lake, which
is stated to yield the black bass, and to have no outlet. Its existence
in a sand formation, indicates perhaps, coral rag, hardpan, or some
firmer material below. This sand is apparently of marine deposition,
and agrees, in this respect, with the extensive formations at the
sources of the Mississippi.
The goods after being carried this distance, are put down, on the
banks of a sandy bottomed brook of very clear cold water, overhung
with alders. Any other person, but one who had become familiar
with northwest portages, would be apt to say, on being ushered to
this secluded spot, “well, this is certainly an eligible spot to quench
one’s thirst at, but as for embarking on this rill, with a canoe and
baggage, the thing seems to be preposterous.” And so it certainly
appeared, on our arrival.—There was not an average depth of water
of more than two to four inches. But by going some distance below,
and damming the stream, it rose in a short time, high enough to
float a canoe, with a part of its lading. The men walking in the
stream, then led the canoes, cutting away the brush to veer them,
and carrying such parts of the lading as could not, from time to
time, be embarked. We did not begin the descent, till six o’clock, in
the evening, and went about a mile during the first hour and a half.
It then became so dark, that it was necessary to encamp. And to
encamp in such a place, seemed impossible. We could not, however,
hesitate. There was no alternative, we could neither advance nor
recede, and we were surrounded with a shaking bog. We slept on a
kind of bog, which the men, call têtes des femmes. Some rain fell
during the night, but we were happily relieved from the fear of
inundation, by the showers passing off. The next morning brought
with it, a resumption of the toil of the evening. Tho canoes were
sent on entirely empty. All the baggage was carried about a mile, at
which distance the stream is perhaps doubled in width, and more
than doubled in depth. The next mile rendering the going quite easy.
At this point, say three miles from the portage, we embarked all our
baggage, and after this, found no want of water, till we came to the
rapids. These, commence about twenty-four miles below the
portage, and they extend with intervals of smooth water, “few and
far between,” to within three or four miles of the point of the
entrance of the river, into Lake Superior. The entire length of this
river may be estimated at one hundred miles, more than eighty
miles of this distance consists of rapids. It has been said that there
are two hundred and forty distinct rapids. At most of these, there is
several feet fall. At some of them eight to ten feet. Four of them
require portages of short extent. Six or seven hundred feet would
not appear to be an extravagant estimate for the entire fall. The
river itself is a perfect torrent; often on looking down its channel,
there are wreaths of foam constituting a brilliant vista, overhung
with foliage. It would never be used at all, for the purposes of the
trade, were it not, that there is much water on the rapids, so that
experienced men can conduct loaded canoes both up and down
them. The river might appropriately be called Rapid, or Mad River, or
almost any thing else, but by its popular name of Brulé. This is, in
fact, rather a departure, than a derivative from the Indian,
Wisákoda, i. e. burnt-pines, or burnt-wood, in allusion to a signal
destruction of its pine forests, by fire. We were two days, and part of
an evening, in effecting the descent, and regained our outward
track, at the point of its discharge into the Fond du Lac of lake
Superior. We reached this point on the fourth of August, late at
night, having gone later than usual, from the fact of finding
ourselves below the rapids, and consequently knowing that we must
be near the lake. Our first certain indication of our proximity to it,
was, however, given by hearing the monotonous thump of an Indian
drum. We soon after came in sight of camp fires, with Indian forms
passing before them.—And we found ourselves, on landing, in the
midst of former Indian acquaintances. Among them were Mongazid
(Loon’s Foot,) the second Chief of Fond du Lac, and Chamees,
(Pouncing Hawk,) a young man who had first recommended himself
to notice in 1820, by guiding a part of Governor Cass’ expedition
above the Knife Portage, and who evinced the same disposition,
during the forepart of the present summer, by acting as a guide to
the party, between Fond du Lac and Sandy Lake. We were pleased
on observing the military boat, used by Lieutenant Allen on the lake,
safely moored, with its sails and tackle, within the mouth of the river,
having been brought down, agreeably to promise, by Mongazid, who
had faithfully remained in charge of it.
The day following, being the Sabbath, was spent at this place. And
the narrative of our route from the Mississippi, may here be
appropriately closed. Some remarks arising from observations on the
condition of the Indians, among whom we have passed, it may be
proper to add; but from the little leisure we can command, they are
necessarily few and brief.
The Chippewas are spread over a very large area in the north,
divided into local bands, and separated by extensive tracts which
are, in great part, sterile. They are not fixed in their habitations at
any point, during the whole of the year, being compelled to go in
search of the game, fish, and other spontaneous productions, on
which they depend. The space which each band periodically
traverses, in this effort, is extensive, and subjects them to casualties,
which they would otherwise escape. Their condition is still further
imbittered by hostilities with the Sioux tribes, who occupy the whole
line of their western frontier. They cover the entire north-western
angle of the United States, extending down the Mississippi valley on
both banks, as low as the Wadub, being the first stream above Sac
river. At this point their territorial line crosses from the west to the
east banks of the Mississippi, pursuing a southerly course, at the
distance of about forty miles from it, until it intersects the lands of
the Winnebagoes, north of the Wisconsin. This portion of the
territory affords decidedly the largest and best body of farming lands
in their possession, and will, probably, hereafter yield them, either
by the proceeds of its sale, or cultivation, a more sure reliance at a
period when the land becomes divested of game. The climate of this
area is comparatively mild, and the Indians who inhabit it,
notwithstanding their partial losses from wars, have evidently
increased in population. They might be concentrated here, could the
agricultural be substituted for the hunter life—a result which may be
expected to follow, but cannot in any reasonable estimate be
expected to precede, their conversion to christianity.
This tribe offer no prominent obstacles to the introduction of the
gospel. We have before adverted to the slender frame work of their
native religion, which seems to be made up, primarily of certain
superstitious ceremonies, winding themselves about the subject of
medicine. It appears to occupy that void in the barbaric mind, which
the soothsayers and magii of other lands, pressed forward, in the
absence of revelation, to fill. But we do not know that the ritual has
any striking features in common. The principal obstacle which
missionaries will have to contend with, is a want of the knowledge of
their language. And to surmount this is a labor which they cannot
too early begin nor too zealously persevere in. The language itself,
as we have before indicated, (vide Chap. X.) presents a copious
vocabulary, and is capable of being made the medium of religious
instruction. It has some defects which will require to be supplied,
and some redundancies which will demand curtailment, when it
comes to be written. But they offer very slight obstacles to oral
communication. It is obviously better suited to convey narrative than
disquisitive matter. And has been so long applied to corporeal
objects, that it requires caution and a familiar knowledge of its
idioms, in the conveyance of intellectual and still more of spiritual
conceptions.
In mere externals, the Chippewas are not essentially different
from other tribes of the Algonquin stock in the western country. And
the points in which a difference holds, may be supposed to have
been, for the most part, the effects of a more ungenial climate. They
are, to a less extent than most of the tribes, cultivators of the soil,
and more exclusively hunters and warriors. Living in a portion of the
continent, remarkable for the number of its large and small lakes,
they find a common resource in fish, and along with this, enjoy the
advantage of reaping the wild rice.
Their government has been deemed a paradox, at the same time
exercising, and too feeble to exercise power. But it is not more
paradoxical than all patriarchal governments, which have their tie in
filial affection, and owe their weakness to versatility of opinion. War
and other public calamities bring them together, while prosperity
drives them apart. They rally on public danger, with wonderful
facility, and they disperse with equal quickness. All their efforts are
of the partizan, popular kind. And if these do not succeed they are
dispirited. There is nothing in their institutions and resources suited
for long continued, steady exertion.
The most striking trait in their moral history is the institution of the
Totem—a sign manual, by which the affiliation of families is traced,
agreeing, more exactly, perhaps, than has been supposed, with the
armorial bearings of the feudal ages. And this institution is kept up,
with a feeling of importance, which it is difficult to account for. An
Indian, as is well known, will tell his specific name with great
reluctance, but his generic or family name—in other words, his
Totem, he will declare without hesitation, and with an evident feeling
of pride.
None of our tribes have proceeded further than the first rude
steps in hieroglyphic writing. And it is a practice in which the
Chippewas are peculiarly expert. No part of their country can be
visited without bringing this trait into prominent notice. Every path
has its blazed and figured trees, conveying intelligence to all who
pass, for all can read and understand these signs. They are taught
to the young as carefully as our alphabet, with the distinction,
however, that hieroglyphic writing, is the prerogative of the males.
These devices are often traced on sheets of birch bark attached to
poles. They are traced on war-clubs, on canoe paddles, bows or gun
stocks. They are often drawn on skins, particularly those used as
back dresses, by warriors. They have also other hieroglyphic modes
of communicating information, by poles with knots of grass attached
to them, or rings of paint. and often by antlers, or animals’ heads
suspended by the banks of rivers.
The following tale is added as an example of the kind of
imaginative lore indicated by it.
ORIGIN OF THE WHITE-FISH.

In ancient times when the Indians were better than they now
are, when their laws were enforced by the chiefs, and when
every crime was promptly punished, there lived a noted hunter
and a just man, at a remote point on the north shore of Lake
Superior. He had a wife and two sons, who were usually left in
the lodge, while he went out in quest of the animals upon
whose flesh they subsisted. As game was then abundant, his
exertions were well rewarded, and he lived in the enjoyment of
every blessing. But there was at this time a venom preparing for
his heart, which was not the less poisonous, because it was for
a time kept in secret. His two little sons had observed the visits
of a neighboring hunter, during the absence of their father, and
they ventured to remonstrate with their mother on the propriety
of receiving clandestine visits, but she was in no temper to be
reasoned with. She rebuked them sharply, and finally, on their
intimation of disclosing the secret, threatened to kill them if
they made any disclosure They were frightened into silence. But
observing the continuance of an improper intercourse, kept up
by stealth as it were, they resolved at last to disclose the whole
matter to their father. The result was such as might be
anticipated. The father being satisfied with the infidelity of his
wife, took up a war club at a moment when he was not
perceived, and with a single blow despatched the object of his
jealousy. He then buried her under the ashes of his fire, took
down his lodge, and removed to a distant position.
But the spirit of the woman haunted the children who were
now grown up to the estate of young men. She appeared to
them in the shadows of evening. She terrified them in dreams.
She harassed their imaginations wherever they went, so that
their life was a life of perpetual terrors. They resolved to leave
the country, and commenced a journey of many days towards
the south. They at length came to the Poiwateeg falls. (St.
Mary’s.) But they had no sooner come in sight of these falls,
than they beheld the skull of the woman (their mother) rolling
along the beach after them. They were in the utmost fear, and
knew not what to do, to elude her, when one of them observed
a large crane sitting on a rock in the rapids. They called out to
the bird. “See, Grandfather, we are persecuted by a spirit. Come
and take us across the falls so that we may escape her.”
This crane was a bird of extraordinary size and great age. And
when first descried by the two sons, sat in a state of stupor, in
the midst of the most violent eddies of the foaming water. When
he heard himself addressed, he stretched forth his neck, with
great deliberation, and then raising himself on his wings flew
across to their assistance. “Be careful” said the crane, “that you
do not touch the back part of my head. It is sore, and should
you press against it, I shall not be able to avoid throwing you
both into the rapids.” They were, however, attentive on this
point, and were both safely landed on the south side of the
river. The crane then resumed its former position in the rapids.
But the skull now cried out. “Come Grandfather and carry me
over, for I have lost my children, and am sorely distressed.” The
aged bird flew to her assistance, but carefully repeated his
injunction, that she must by no means touch the back part of
his head, which had been hurt, and was not yet healed. She
promised to obey, but she soon felt a curiosity to know, where
the head of her carrier had been hurt, and how so aged a bird
could have acquired such a bad wound. She thought it strange,
and before they were half way over the rapids, could not resist
the inclination she felt to touch the affected part. Instantly the
crane threw her into the rapids. The skull floated down from
rock to rock, striking violently against their hard edges, until it
was battered to fragments, and the sons were thus happily and
effectually relieved from their tormentor. But the brains of the
woman, when the skull was dashed against the rocks, fell into
the water, in the form of small white roes, which soon assumed
the shape of a novel kind of fish, possessing a whiteness of
color peculiar to itself; and these rapids have ever since been
well stocked with this new and delicious species of fish.
The sons meantime took up their permanent abode at these
Falls, becoming the progenitors of the present tribe, and in
gratitude to their deliverer adopted the Crane[25] as their
Totem.
APPENDIX

I. NATURAL HISTORY.

APPENDIX.

1. List of Shells collected by Mr. Schoolcraft, in the western


and north-western territory.

BY WILLIAM COOPER.

HELIX.
1. Helix albolabris, Say. Near Lake Michigan.
2. Helix alternata, Say. Banks of the Wabash, near and above the
Tippecanoe. Mr. Say remarks, that these two species, so common in
the Atlantic states, were not met with in Major Long’s second
expedition, until their arrival in the secondary country at the eastern
extremity of Lake Superior.

PLANORBIS.
3. Planorbis campanulatus, Say. Itasca (or La Biche) Lake, the source
of the Mississippi.
4. Planorbis trivolvis, Say. Lake Michigan. These two species were
also observed by Mr. Say, as far east as the Falls of Niagara.

LYMNEUS.
5. Lymneus umbrosus, Say. Am. Con. iv. pl. xxxi. fig. 1. Lake
Winnipec, Upper Mississippi, and Rainy Lake.
6. Lymneus reflexus, Say. 1. c. pl. xxxi. fig. 2. Rainy Lake, Seine
River, and Lake Winnipec.
7. Lymneus stagnalis. Lake a la Crosse, Upper Mississippi.

PALUDINA.
8. Paludina ponderosa, Say. Wisconsin River.
9. Paludina vivipara, Say. Am. Con. i. pl. x. The American specimens
of this shell are more depressed than the European, but appear to
be identical in species.

MELANIA.
10. Melania virginica, Say. Lake Michigan.

ANODONTA.
11. Anodonta cataracta, Say. Chicago, Lake Michigan. This species,
Mr. Lea remarks, has a great geographical extension.
12. Anodonta corpulenta, Nobis. Shell thin and fragile, though less
so than others of the genus; much inflated at the umbones, margins
somewhat compressed; valves connate over the hinge in perfect
specimens; surface dark brown, in old shells; in younger, of a pale
dingy green, and without rays, in all I have examined; beaks slightly
undulated at tip. The color within is generally of a livid coppery hue,
but sometimes, also, pure white.
Length of a middling sized specimen, four and a half inches,
breadth, six and a quarter. It is often eighteen inches in
circumference, round the border of the valves, with a diameter
through the umbones of three inches. Inhabits the Upper Mississippi,
from Prairie du Chien to Lake Pepin.
This fine shell, much the largest I have seen of the genus, was
first sent by Mr. Schoolcraft, to the Lyceum, several years ago. So far
as I am able to discover, it is undescribed, and a distinct and
remarkable species. It may be known by its length being greater in
proportion to its breadth than in the other American species, by the
subrhomboidal form of the posterior half, and, generally, by the color
of the nacre, though this is not to be relied on. It appears to belong
to the genus Symphynota of Mr. Lea.

ALASMODONTA.
13. Alasmodonta complanata, Barnes. Symphynota complanata, Lea. Shell
Lake, River St. Croix, Upper Mississippi. Many species of shells found
in this lake grow to an extraordinary size. Some of the present
collected by Mr. Schoolcraft, measure nineteen inches in
circumference.
14. Alasmodontab rugosa, Barnes. St. Croix River, and Lake Vaseux,
St. Mary’s River.
15. Alasmodonta marginata, Say. Lake Vaseux, St. Mary’s River: very
large.
16. Alasmodonta edentula? Say. Anodon areolatus? Swainson. Lake
Vaseux. The specimens of this shell are too old and imperfect to be
safely determined.

UNIO.
17. Unio tuberculatus, Barnes. Painted Rock, Upper Mississippi.
18. Unio pustulosus, Lea. Upper Mississippi, Prairie du Chien, to
Lake Pepin.
19. Unio verrucosus, Barnes, Lea. St. Croix River of the Upper
Mississippi.
20. Unio plicatus, Le Sueur, Say. Prairie du Chien, and River St.
Croix.
The specimens of U. plicatus sent from this locality by Mr.
Schoolcraft have the nacre beautifully tinged with violet, near the
posterior border of the shell, and are also much more ventricose
them those found in more eastern localities, as Pittsburgh, for
example; at the same time, I believe them to be of the same
species. Similar variations are observed in other species; the
specimens from the south and west generally exhibiting a greater
development.
21. Unio trigonus, Lea. From the same locality as the last, and like
it unusually ventricose.
22. Unio ebenus, Lea. Upper Mississippi, between Prairie du Chien
and Lake Pepin.
23. Unio gibbosus, Barnes. St. Croix River, Upper Mississippi.
24. Unio rectus, Lamarck. U. prælongus, Barnes. Upper Mississippi,
from Prairie du Chien to Lake Pepin, and the River St. Croix. The
specimens collected by Mr. Schoolcraft, vary much in the color of the
nacre. Some have it entirely white, others, rose purple, and others
entirely of a very fine dark salmon color. This species inhabits the St.
Lawrence as far east as Montreal.
25. Unio siliquoideus, Barnes, and U. inflatus, Barnes. Upper
Mississippi, between Prairie du Chien and Lake Pepin. Large,
ponderous, and the epidermis finely rayed.
26. Unio complanatus, Lea. U. purpureus, Say. Lake Vaseux, St.
Mary’s River. Lake Vaseux is an expansion of the River St. Mary, a
tributary of the upper lakes. This shell does not appear to exist in
any of the streams flowing into the Mississippi.
27. Unio crassus, Say. Upper Mississippi, Prairie du Chien.
28. Unio radiatus, Barnes. Lake Vaseux. The specimen is old and
imperfect, but I believe it to be the U. radiatus of our conchologists,
which is common in Lake Champlain and also inhabits the St.
Lawrence.
29. Unio occidens, Lea. U. ventricosus, Say, Am. Con. U. ventricosus,
Barnes? Wisconsin and St. Croix Rivers, and Shell Lake. Epidermis
variously colored, and marked with numerous rays.
30. Unio ventricosus, Barnes. Upper Mississippi, from Prairie du
Chien to Lake Pepin and Shell Lake. The varieties of this, and the
preceding pass insensibly into each other. Those from Shell Lake are
of extraordinary size.
31. Unio alatus, Say. Symphynota alata, Lea. Upper Mississippi, and
Shell Lake. Found also in Lake Champlain, by the late Mr. Barnes.
32. Unio gracilis, Barnes. Symphynota gracilis, Lea. Upper
Mississippi, and Shell Lake. The specimens brought by Mr.
Schoolcraft are larger and more beautiful than I have seen from any
other locality.

2. Localities of Minerals observed in the northwest in


1831 and 1832.

BY HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT.

CLASS I. Bodies not metallic, containing an acid.


1. Calcareous spar. Keweena Point, Lake Superior. Imbedded in
small globular masses, in the trap rock; also forming veins in the
same formation. Some of the masses break into rhombic forms, and
possess a certain but not perfect degree of transparency; others are
opaque, or discolored by the green carbonate of copper. Also in the
trap rock between Fond du Lac and Old Grand Portage, Lake
Superior, in perfect, transparent rhombs, exhibiting the property of
double refraction. Also, at the lead mines, in Iowa county, in the
marly clay formation, often exhibiting imperfect prisms, variously
truncated.
2. Calcareous tufa. Mouth of the River Brulé, of Lake Superior. In
small, friable, broken masses, in the diluvial soil. Also, in the gorge
below the Falls of St. Anthony. In detached, vesicular masses, amidst
debris.
3. Compact carbonate of lime. In the calcareous cliffs of horizontal
formation, commencing at the Falls of St. Anthony. Carboniferous.
4. Septaria. In the reddish clay soil, between Montreal River, and
Lapointe, Lake Superior.
5. Gypsum. In the sandstone rock at the Point of Grand Sable West,
Lake Superior. In orbicular masses, firmly imbedded. Not abundant.
Granular, also imperfectly foliated.
6. Carbonate of magnesia. Serpentine rock, at Presque Isle, Lake
Superior. Compact.
7. Hydrate of magnesia? With the preceding.

CLASS II. Earthy compounds, amorphous or crystalline.


8. Common quartz. Huron Islands, Lake Superior, also the adjoining
coast. In very large veins or beds. White, opaque.
9. Granular quartz. Falls of Peckagama, Upper Mississippi. In situ.
10. Smoky quartz. In the trap rock Keweena Point, Lake Superior,
crystallized. In connection with amethystine quartz.
11. Amethyst. With the preceding. Also, at the Pic Bay, and at
Gargontwa, north shore of Lake Superior, in the trap rock, in perfect
crystals of various intensity of color.
12. Chalcedony. Keweena Point, Lake Superior. In globular or
orbicular masses, in amygdaloid rock. Often, in detached masses
along the shores.
13. Carnelian. With the preceding.
14. Hornstone. In detached masses, very hard, on the shores of
Lake Superior. Also, at Dodgeville, Iowa county, Mich. Ter. in
fragments or nodular masses in the clay soil.
15. Jasper. In the preceding locality. Common and striped,
exceedingly difficult of being acted on, by the wheel. Not observed
in situ.
16. Agate. Imbedded in the trap rocks of Lake Superior, and also
detached, forming a constituent of its detritus. Variously colored.
Often made up of alternate layers of chalcedony, carnelian, and
cacholong. Sometimes zoned, or in fortification points. Specimens
not taken from the rock are not capable of being scratched by quartz
or flint, and are incapable of being acted on by the file; consequently
harder than any of the described species.
17. Cyanite. Specimens of this mineral, in flat, six-sided prisms
imbedded in a dark primitive rock, were brought out from Lac du
Flambeau outlet, where the rock is described as existing in situ. The
locality has not been visited, but there are facts brought to light
within the last two or three years, to justify the extension of the
primitive to that section of country.
18. Pitchstone. A detached mass of this mineral, very black and
lava-like, was picked up in the region of Lake Superior, where the
volcanic mineral, trachyte, is common among the rolled masses.
Neither of these substances have been observed in situ.
19. Mica. Huron Islands, Lake Superior. In granite.
20. Schorl. Common. Outlet of Lac du Flambeau. Also, in a
detached mass of primitive rock at Green Bay.
21. Feldspar. Porcupine mountains, Lake Superior.
22. Basalt. Amorphous. Granite Point, Lake Superior.
23. Stilbite. Amygdaloid rock, Keweena Point, Lake Superior.
24. Zeolite. Mealy. With the preceding.
25. Zeolite. Radiated. Lake Superior. This mineral consists of
fibres, so delicate and firmly united as to appear almost compact,
radiating from a centre. Some of the masses produced by this
radiation, measure 2.5 inches in diameter. They are of a uniform,
pale, yellowish red. This mineral has not been traced in situ, being
found in detached masses of rock, and sometimes as water-worn
portions of radii. Its true position would seem to be the trap rock.
26. Asbestos. Presque Isle, Lake Superior. In the serpentine
formation.
27. Hornblende. Very abundant as a constituent of the primitive
rocks on the Upper Mississippi, and in the basin of Lake Superior.
Often in distinct crystals.
28. Diallage, green. Lake Superior. In detached masses, connected
with primitive boulders. Harder than the species.
29. Serpentine, common. Presque Isle, Lake Superior.
30. Serpentine, precious. With the preceding. Color a light pistachio
green, and takes a fine polish. Exists in veins in the common variety.
31. Pseudomorphous serpentine. With the preceding. This beautiful
green mineral constitutes a portion of the veins of the precious
serpentine. Its crystalline impressions are very distinct.
32. Argillite. River St. Louis, northwest of Lake Superior. Nearly
vertical in its position.

CLASS III. Combustibles.


33. Peat. Marine sand formation composing the shore of Lake
Superior, between White-fish Point and Grand Marrais. Also, on the
island of Michilimackinac.

CLASS IV. Ores and Metals.


34. Native copper. West side of Keweena Point, Lake Superior.
Imbedded in a vein with carbonate of copper, and copper black, in
the trap rock.
35. Copper black. With the preceding.
36. Carbonate of copper, green. With the preceding.
These two minerals (35 and 36) characterize the trap rock of the
peninsula of Keweena, Lake Superior, from Montreal Bay, extending
to, and around its extremity, west, to Sand-hill Bay. The entire area
may be estimated to comprise a rocky, serrated coast of about
seventy-five miles in length, and not to exceed seven or eight miles
in width. The principal veins are at a point called Roche Verd, and
along the coast which we refer to as the Black Rocks. At the latter,
native copper is one of the constituents of the vein.
Green and blue carbonate of copper, was also observed in limited
quantity, in small rounded masses at one of the lead diggings near
Mineral Point, Iowa county.
38. Chromate of iron. Presque Isle, Lake Superior.
39. Sulphuret of lead. Lead mines of Iowa county, Michigan
Territory.
40. Earthy carbonate of lead. Brigham’s mine, Iowa county, Mich.
Ter. Also, in small masses, of a yellowish white, dirty color, and great
comparative weight, at several of the lead mines (diggings) in the
more westerly and southern parts of the county.

3. Localities of plants collected in the north-western


expeditions of 1831 and 1832.

BY DOUGLASS HOUGHTON, M. D.
SURGEON TO THE EXPEDITIONS.

The localities of the following plants are transcribed from a


catalogue kept during the progress of the expeditions, and embrace
many plants common to our country, which were collected barely for
the purpose of comparison. A more detailed account will be
published at some future day.

Aster tenuifolius, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.


“ sericea, Nuttall. River de Corbeau, Missouri Ter.
“ loevis? Willdenow. St. Croix River, Northwest Ter.
“ concolor, Willdenow. Fox River, Northwest Ter.
“ (N. Spec.) Sources of Yellow River, Northwest Ter.
Andropogon furcatus, Willdenow. do.
Alopecurus geniculatus, Linneus. Sault Ste Marie, M. T.
Aira flexuosa. Sault Ste Marie, M. T.
Allium tricoccum, Aiton. Ontonagon River of Lake Superior.
“ cernuum, Roth. River de Corbeau to the sources of the
Miss.
“ (N. Spec.) St. Louis River of Lake Superior.
Amorpha canescens, Nuttall. Upper Mississippi.
Artemesia canadensis, Mx. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
“ sericea, Nuttall. Keweena Point, Lake Superior.
“ gnaphaloides, Nuttall. Fox River, Northwest Ter.
Arabis hirsuta, De Candolle. Upper Mississippi.
“ lyrata, Linn. Lake Superior to the source of the Miss.
Arundo canadensis, Mx. Lake Superior.
Arenaria lateriflora, Linn. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
Alnus glauca, Mx. St. Croix River to the sources of the Miss.
Alliona albida, Walter. Yellow River, Northwest Ter.
Aronia sanguinea. Lake Superior to the sources of the Miss.
Alectoria jubata. do.
Aletris farinosa. Prairies of Michigan Ter.
Bidens beckii, Torrey. St. Croix River to the sources of the Miss.
Bunias maritima, Willdenow. Lake Michigan.
Baptisia coerulea, Michaux. Fox River, Northwest Ter.
Blitum capitatum. Northwest Ter.
Betula papyracea, Willdenow. Lake Superior to the sources of
the Miss.
Betula glandulosa. Savannah River, Northwest Ter.
Bartramia fontana. Lake Superior.
Bromus canadensis, Michaux. Upper Mississippi.
Batschia canescens. Plains of the Mississippi.
“ “ Var. (or N. Spec.) Lake Superior.
Carex paucifolia. Sault Ste Marie. Mich. Ter.
“ scirpoides, Schkuhr. do.
“ limosa, Linn. do.
“ curata, Gmelin. do.
“ (apparently N. Spec. allied to C. scabrata.) Sources of
the Miss.
“ washingtoniana, Dewy. Lake Superior.
“ lacustris, Willdenow. do.
“ oedere, Ehrhart. Leech Lake.
“ logopodioides, Schkuhr. Savannah River, Northwest Ter.
“ rosea, Var. Lake Superior.
“ festucacea, Schkuhr. St. Louis River of Lake Superior.
Cyperus mariscoides, Elliott. Upper Mississippi.
“ alterniflorus, Schwinitz. River St. Clair, Mich. Ter.
Cnicus pitcheri, Torrey. Lakes Michigan and Superior.
Coreopsis palmata, Nuttall. Prairies of the Upper Mississippi.
Cardamine pratensis. Lake Superior to the sources of the Miss.
Calamagrostis coarctata, Torrey. Lake Winnipec.
Cetraria icelandica. Lakes Superior and Michigan.
Corydalis aurea, Willdenow. Cass Lake, Upper Mississippi.
“ glauca, Persoon. Lake Superior.
Cynoglossum amplexicaule, Michaux. Sault Ste Marie.
Cassia chamoecrista. Upper Mississippi.
Corylus americana, Walter. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
“ rostrata, Willdenow. do.
Cistus canadensis, Willdenow. do.
Cornus circinata, L’Heritier. do.
Cypripedium acaule, Aiton. do.
Cymbidium pulchellum, Swartz. do do.
Corallorhiza multiflora, Torrey. Lake Superior.
Convallaria borealis, Willdenow. Lake Superior to the sources of
the Mississippi.
“ trifolia, Linn. Lake Superior.
Cenchrus echinatus, Linn. Upper Mississippi.
Cerastium viscosum, Linn. Lake Superior.
“ oblongifolium, Torrey. Michigan Ter.
Campanula acuminata, Michaux. St. Louis River of Lake
Superior.
Chrysosplenium oppositifolium. Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
Cinna arundinacea, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
Drosera linearis, Hooker. Lake Superior.
“ rotundifolia. Lake Superior to the sources of the Miss.
“ americana, Muhlenberg. do.
Dracocephalum virginicum, Willdenow. Red Cedar River,
Northwest Territory.
Delphinum virescens, Nuttall. Upper Mississippi.
Danthonia spicata, Willdenow. Mauvais River of Lake Superior.
Dirca palustris, Willdenow. Ontonagon River of Lake Superior.
Equisetum limosum, Torrey. Lake Superior.
“ palustre, Willdenow. do.
“ variegatum, Smith. Lake Michigan.
Erigeron integrifolium, Bigelow. Falls of Peckagama, Upper Miss.
“ purpureum, Willdenow. do.
“ (N. Spec.) Sources of St. Croix River, Northwest Ter.
“ heterophyllum, Var. or (N. Spec.) do.
Eryngium aquaticum, Jussieu. Galena, Ill.
Euphorbia corollata, Willdenow. Red Cedar River.
Eriophorum virginicum, Linn. Lake Superior.
“ alpinum, Linn. do.
“ polystachyon, Linn. do.
Empetrum nigrum, Michaux. do.
Erysimum chiranthoides, Linn. do.
Eriocaulon pellucidum, Michaux, do.
Euchroma coccinea, Willdenow. Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
Elymus striatus, Willdenow. St. Croix River, Northwest Ter.
“ virginicus, Linn. do.
Festuca nutans, Willdenow. Lake Winnipec.
Glycera fluitans, Brown. Savannah River, Northwest Ter.
Gyrophora papulosa. Lake Superior.
Gentiana crinita, Willdenow. Lake Michigan.
Geranium carolinianum. Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
Galium lanceolatum, Torrey. Red Cedar River to the Mississippi.
Gerardia pedicularis, Fox River, Northwest Ter.
“ maratima, Rafinesque, Lake Michigan.
Galeopsis tetrahit, Var. Falls of St. Mary, Mich. Ter.
Gnaphalium plantaginium, Var. Source of the Mississippi.
Goodyera pubescens, Willdenow. Lake Superior.
Hippophae canadensis, Willdenow. do.
“ argentea, Pursh. do.
Hedeoma glabra, Persoon. Lake Michigan to the sources of the
Miss.
Hydropeltis purpurea, Michaux. Northwest Ter.
Hippuris vulgaris. Yellow River to sources of the Mississippi.
Hudsonia tomentosa, Nuttall. Lake Superior.
Hypericum canadense. do.
“ prolificum, Willdenow. Lake Michigan.
Hieracium fasciculatum, Pursh. Pukwaewa Lake, Northwest Ter.
Hierochloa borealis, Roemer & Schultes. Lake Superior.
Holcus lanatus. Savannah River, Northwest Ter.
Houstonia longifalia, Willdenow. St. Louis River of Lake Superior.
Heuchera americana, Linn. do.
Hypnum crista-castrensis. Source of the Mississippi.
Hordeum jubatum. Upper Red Cedar Lake.
Helianthus decapetalis. Northwest Ter.
“ gracilis, Torrey. Upper Lake St. Croix, Northwest Ter.
Hyssopus anisatus, Nuttall. Upper Mississippi.
Hyssopus scrophularifolius, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
Inula villosa, Nuttall. Upper Mississippi.
Ilex canadensis, Michaux. Lake Superior.
Juncus nodosus. St. Mary’s River.
“ polycephalus, Michaux. Lake Superior.
Koeleria nitida, Nuttall. Lake Winnipec.
Lycopodium dendroideum, Michaux. Lake Superior to the
sources of the Mississippi.
“ annotinum, Willdenow. do.
Lonicera hirsuta, Eaton. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
“ sempervirens, Aiton. Lake Superior.
Lechea minor. Upper Mississippi.
Linnea borealis, Willdenow. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
Lathyrus palustris. Lake Superior.
“ decaphyllus, Pursh. Leech Lake.
“ maritimus, Bigelow. Lake Superior.
Lobelia kalmii, Linneus. do.
“ claytoniana, Michaux. Upper Mississippi.
“ puberula?, Michaux. Yellow River, Northwest Ter.
Liatris scariosa, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
“ cylindrica, Michaux. do.
Lysimachia revoluta, Nuttall. Lake Superior.
“ thyrsifolia, Michaux, do.
Ledum latifolium, Aiton. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
Myrica gale, Willdenow. Lake Superior.
Malva (N. Spec.) Upper Mississippi.
Monarda punctata, Linneus. Upper Mississippi.
“ oblongata, Aiton. do.
Microstylis ophioglossoides, Willdenow. Lac la Biche.
Myriophyllum spicatum. Lake Superior.
Mitella cordifolia, Lamarck. do.
Menyanthes trifoliata, Lake Superior to the sources of the Miss.
Myosotis arvensis, Sibthorp. St. Clair River, Mich. Ter.
Nelumbium luteum, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
Oenothere biennis, Var. Bois Brulé River of Lake Superior.
“ serrulata, Nuttall. Upper Mississippi.
Psoralea argophylla, Pursh. Falls of St. Anthony.
Primula farinosa, Var. americana, Torrey. Lakes Huron and
Superior.
“ mistasinica, Michaux. Keweena Point Lake Superior.
Pingwicula (N. Spec.) Presque Isle, Lake Superior.
Parnassia americana, Muhlenberg. Lake Michigan.
Pedicularis gladiata, Michaux. Fox River.
Pinus nigra, Lambert. Lake Superior.
“ banksiana, Lambert. Lake Superior.
Populus tremuloides, Michaux. Northwest Ter.
“ loevigata, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
Prunus depressa, Pursh. Lakes Superior and Michigan.
Petalostemon violaceum, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
Petalostemon candidum, Willdenow. Upper Mississippi.
Potentilla tridentata, Aiton. Lake Superior.
“ fruticosa, Linneus. Lakes Superior and Michigan.
Pyrola uniflora. Mauvais River of Lake Superior.
Polygonum amphibium, Linneas. St. Croix River.
“ cilinode, Michaux. Lake Superior.
“ articulatum, Linneus. do.
“ coccinium, Willdenow. St. Croix River.
Polygala polygama, Walter. Northwest Ter.
Phlox aristata, Michaux. Upper Mississippi.
Poa canadensis. do.
Pentstemon gracile, Nuttall. Upper Red Cedar Lake.
“ grandiflorum, Nuttall. Falls of St. Anthony.
Physalis lanceolata, Var. (or N. Spec.) Lac la Biche.
Quercus coccinea, Wangenheim. Upper Red Cedar Lake.
“ obtusiloba, Michaux. Upper Mississippi.
Ranunculus filiformis, Michaux. Falls of St. Mary, Mich. Ter.
“ pusillus, Pursh. Mich. Ter.
“ prostratus, Lamarck. Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
“ lacustris, Beck & Tracy. Upper Mississippi.
Rudbeckia hirta, Linneus. Upper Mississippi and Michigan Ter.
“ digitata, Aiton. Upper Mississippi.
Rubus parviflorus, Nuttall. Lake Superior to the sources of the
Miss.
“ hispidus, Linneus. Lake Superior.
“ saxatilis, Var. canadensis, Michaux. Lake Superior.
Rosa gemella, Willdenow. Lake Superior.
“ rubifolia, Brown. Michigan Ter.
Ribes albinervum, Michaux. Sources of the St. Croix River.
Saururus cernuus, Linneus. Upper Mississippi.
Streptopus roseus, Michaux. Lake Superior.
Sisymbrium brachycarpum, Richardson. Lake Superior.
“ chiranthoides, Linneus, do.
Swertia deflexa, Smith. Bois Brulé River of Lake Superior.
Silphium terebinthinaceum, Elliott. Michigan Territory to the
Miss.
“ gummiferum. Fox River to the Mississippi.
Stachys aspera, Var. Michaux. Lake Superior.
Sterocaulon paschale. do.
Struthiopteris pennsylvanica, Willdenow. Lake Superior.
Scirpus frigetur? Lake of the Isles, Northwest Ter.
“ palustris, Linneus. Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
Salix prinoides, Pursh. Mauvais River of Lake Superior.
“ longifolia, Muhlenberg. Upper Mississippi.
Spiraea opulifolia, Var. tomentella, De Candolle. Lake Superior.
Sorbus americana, Willdenow. Lake Huron to the head of Lake
Superior.
Smilax rotundifolia, Linneus. Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
Silene antirrhina, Linneus. Lac la Biche.
Saxifraga virginiensis, Michaux. Lake Superior.
Scutellaria ambigna, Nuttall. Upper Mississippi.
Solidago virgaurea, Var. alpina. Lake Superior.
Stipa jencea, Nuttall. Usawa R.
Symphora racemosa, Michaux. Source of the Miss. R.
Senecio balsamitae, Var. Falls of Peckagama, Upper Miss.
Sagittaria heterophylla, Pursh. Upper Miss.
Tanacetum huronensis, Nuttall. Lakes Michigan and Superior.
Tussilago palmata, Willdenow. Lake Michigan.
Tofeldia pubens, Michaux. Lake Superior.
Triglochin maritimum, Linneus. do.
Thalyctrum corynellum, De Candolle. St. Louis River.
Triticum repens, Linneus. Leech Lake.
Troximon virginicum, Pursh. Lake Winnipec.
Talinum teretifolium, Pursh. St. Croix River.
Tradescantia virginica, Upper Miss.
Utricularia cornuta, Michaux. Lake Superior.
“ purpurea, Walter. Lac Chetac, N. W. Ter.
Uraspermum canadense, Lake Superior to the Miss.
Viola lanceolata, Linneus. Sault Ste Marie.
“ pedata, Var, (or N. Spec.) Lac la Biche, source of the
Miss.
Virburnum oxycoccus, Pursh. Lake Superior.
“ lentago, do.
Vernonia novoboracensis, Willdenow. Upper Miss.
Verbena bracteosa, Michaux. do.
“ stricta, Ventenat. do.
Zapania nodiflora, Michaux. Galena, Illinois.
Zigadenus chloranthus, Richardson. Sandy shores of Lake
Michigan.
Zizania aquatica, Pursh. Illinois to the sources of the Miss.
II. INDIAN LANGUAGE.
[The following observations are part of a course of lectures on the grammatical
structure of the Indian languages, delivered before the St. Mary’s Committee of
the Algic Society.—H. R. S.]

I. LECTURES ON THE CHIPPEWA SUBSTANTIVE.

LECTURE I.
Observations on the Ojibwai Substantive. 1. The provision of the language for indicating
gender—Its general and comprehensive character—The division of words into animate
and inanimate classes. 2. Number—its recondite forms, arising from the terminal
vowel in the word. 3. The grammatical forms which indicate possession, and enable
the speaker to distinguish the objective person.

Most of the researches which have been directed to the Indian


languages, have resulted in elucidating the principles governing the
use of the verb, which has been proved to be full and varied in its
inflections. Either, less attention has been paid to the other parts of
speech, or results less suited to create high expectations of their
flexibility and powers, have been attained. The Indian verb has thus
been made to stand out, as it were in bold relief as a shield to
defects in the substantive and its accessories, and as, in fact,
compensating, by its multiform appendages of prefix and suffix—by
its tensal, its pronominal, its substantive, its adjective, and its
adverbial terminations; for barrenness and rigidity in all other parts
of speech. Influenced by this reflection, I shall defer, in the present
inquiry, the remarks I intend offering on the verb, until I have
considered the substantive, and its more important adjuncts.
Palpable objects, to which the idea of sense strongly attaches, and
the actions or condition, which determine the relation of one object
to another, are perhaps, the first points to demand attention in the
invention of languages. And they have certainly imprinted
themselves very strongly, with all their materiality, and with all their
local, and exclusive, and personal peculiarities upon the Indian. The
noun and the verb not only thus constitute the principal elements of
speech, as in all languages; but they continue to perform their first
offices, with less direct aid from the auxiliary parts of speech, than
would appear to be reconcileable with a clear expression of the
circumstances of time and place, number and person, quality and
quantity, action and repose, and the other accidents, on which their
definite employment depends. But to enable the substantives and
attributives to perform these complex offices, they are provided with
inflections, and undergo changes and modifications, by which words
and phrases become very concrete in their meaning, and are
lengthened out to appear formidable to the eye. Hence the
polysyllabic, and the descriptive character of the language, so
composite in its aspect and in its forms.
To utter succinctly, and in as few words as possible the prominent
ideas resting upon the mind of the speaker, appear to have been the
paramount object with the inventors of the language. Hence
concentration became a leading feature. And the pronoun, the
adjective, the adverb and the preposition, however they may be
disjunctively employed in certain cases, are chiefly useful as
furnishing materials to the speaker, to be worked up into the
complicated texture of the verb and the substantive. Nothing, in fact,
can be more unlike, than the language, viewed in its original,
elementary state,—in a vocabulary, for instance, of its primitive
words, so far as such a vocabulary can now be formed, and the
same language as heard under its oral, amalgamated form. Its
transpositions may be likened to a picture, in which the copal, the
carmine and the white lead, are no longer recognized as distinct
substances, but each of which has contributed its share towards the
effect. It is the painter only who possesses the principle, by which
one element has been curtailed, another augmented, and all,
however seemingly discordant, made to coalesce.
Such a language may be expected to abound in derivatives and
compounds; to afford rules for giving verbs substantive, and
substantives verbal qualities; to concentrate the meaning of words
upon a few syllables, or upon a single letter, or alphabetical sign;
and to supply modes of contraction and augmentation, and, if I may
so say, short cuts, and by paths to meanings, which are equally
novel and interesting. To arrive at its primitives, we must pursue an
intricate thread, where analogy is often the only guide. We must
divest words of those accumulated syllables, or particles, which, like
the molecules of material matter, are clustered around the
primitives. It is only after a process of this kind, that the principle of
combination—that secret wire, which moves the whole machinery
can be searched for, with a reasonable prospect of success. The
labor of analysis is one of the most interesting and important, which
the subject presents. And it is a labor which it will be expedient to
keep constantly in view, until we have separately considered the
several parts of speech, and the grammatical laws by which the
language is held together; and thus established principles and
provided materials wherewith we may the more successfully labor.
1. In a general survey of the language as it is spoken, and as it
must be written, there is perhaps no feature which obtrudes itself so
constantly to view, as the principle which separates all words, of
whatever denomination, into animates and inanimates, as they are
applied to objects in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom. This
principle has been grafted upon most words, and carries its
distinctions throughout the syntax. It is the gender of the language;
but a gender of so unbounded a scope, as to merge in it the
common distinctions of a masculine and feminine, and to give a two-
fold character to the parts of speech. The concords which it requires,
and the double inflections it provides, will be mentioned in their
appropriate places. It will be sufficient here to observe, that animate
nouns require animate verbs for their nominatives, animate
adjectives to express their qualities, and animate demonstrative
pronouns to mark the distinctions of person. Thus, if we say, I see a
man; I see a house, the termination of the verb must be changed.
What was in the first instance wâb imâ, is altered to wâb indân.
Wâb, is here the infinitive, but the root of this verb is still more

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