otherwise than as subject.  The suffixed element in “kill-s” corresponds to the English suffix with the important exceptions that it makes no reference to the number of the subject and that the statement is known to be true, that it is vouched for by the speaker.  Number is only indirectly expressed in the sentence in so far as there is no specific verb suffix indicating plurality of the subject nor specific plural elements in the two nouns.  Had the statement been made on another’s authority, a totally different “tense-modal” suffix would have had to be used.  The pronouns of reference ("he”) imply nothing by themselves as to number, gender, or case.  Gender, indeed, is completely absent in Yana as a relational category.

[Footnote 56:  Agriculture was not practised by the Yana.  The verbal idea of “to farm” would probably be expressed in some such synthetic manner as “to dig-earth” or “to grow-cause.”  There are suffixed elements corresponding to _-er_ and _-ling_.]

The Yana sentence has already illustrated the point that certain of our supposedly essential concepts may be ignored; both the Yana and the German sentence illustrate the further point that certain concepts may need expression for which an English-speaking person, or rather the English-speaking habit, finds no need whatever.  One could go on and give endless examples of such deviations from English form, but we shall have to content ourselves with a few more indications.  In the Chinese sentence “Man kill duck,” which may be looked upon as the practical equivalent of “The man kills the duck,” there is by no means present for the Chinese consciousness that childish, halting, empty feeling which we experience in the literal English translation.  The three concrete concepts—­two objects and an action—­are each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts—­“subject” and “object”—­are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action.  And that is all.  Definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender—­all these are given no expression in the Chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate communication—­provided, of course, there is that context, that background of mutual understanding that is essential to the complete intelligibility of all speech.  Nor does this qualification impair our argument, for in the English sentence too we leave unexpressed a large number of ideas which are either taken for granted or which have been developed or are about to be developed in the course of the conversation.  Nothing has been said, for example, in the English, German, Yana, or Chinese sentence as to the place relations of the farmer, the duck, the speaker, and the listener.  Are the farmer and the duck both visible or is one or the other invisible from the point of view of the speaker, and are both