2. This language displays an effort to express, besides the other purposes of the verb, particularly its synthetic power, which is all the more apparent as it uses different means in different cases, but all designed to accomplish the same purpose.
The Yaruri language constructs the whole of its conjugation in a yet simpler manner by means of an auxiliary verb.
The union of the pronoun and the tense sign which, as we have already seen, forms the substantive verb, affixed to the stem, completes the inflections of the one and only conjugation of attributive verbs, except that the independent pronouns are prefixed. Neither the stem nor the auxiliary words suffer any changes, except the insertion of an _n_ in one person. The union remains, however, a loose one, and when person and tense are manifest by the connection, the auxiliary verb is omitted. This happens in certain verbs ending in _pa_. These, contrary to the usual rule, change in the perfect this termination to _pea_, by which the tense is made apparent, and as the person is evident from the prefixed personal pronoun, the auxiliary can be dropped without danger of obscurity.
The formation of certain tenses by means of auxiliaries is also frequent in American languages.
An optative of this nature in the Lule language has already been mentioned.
In the Mixteca tongue the imperfect is thus formed from the present, which carries with it the personal sign, and the perfect without its personal sign, a proceeding which, however rude and awkward it may be, shows a just appreciation of the peculiarity of this past tense, which expresses an action as going on, and therefore present in past time. The expression of continuous action is placed first, "I sin," then this is more precisely defined by the mark of past time, "this was so;" _Yo-dzatevain-di-ni-cuvui_. _Yo_ is the sign of the present, _ni_ of the preterit, _di_ is the pronoun; the other two words, _to sin_ and _to be_: "I was sinning."
The sign of the present, _yo_, is probably an abbreviation of the verb _yodzo_, I stand upon or over something, and so there is a second auxiliary in the sentence. This may often be a means of discovering the origin of tense signs, as, especially in American tongues, tenses are often formed by the union of verbs, as also occurs in Sanscrit and Greek.