of Union. He died in 1801. Contribution to linguistics Edwards was a pioneer in the historical linguistics of Native North America. He was raised in the community of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Native American speakers of the Mohican language were the majority, and he became fluent in that language as a child. In 1755, Edwards's father sent him to stay in the Iroquois settlement of Onohoquaga, with the purpose of training him for future missionary work. Through this experience, Edwards acquired first-hand knowledge of Iroquoian and other Algonquian languages. In 1787, Edwards published a study of the Mohican language, which he referred to as Muhhekaneew. In it, he chronicled basic vocabulary and grammar rules and recorded the marked differences between Mohican and English. He argued against the misconception that Native Americans had no distinct parts of speech in their language, writing, "It has been said that savages have no parts of speech beside the substantive and the verb. This is not true concerning the Mohegans, nor concerning any other tribe of Indians, of whose language I have any knowledge. The Mohegans have all the eight parts of speech, to be found in other languages; though prepositions are so rarely used, except in composition, that I once determined that part of speech to be wanting." In 1787, Edwards published a study of the Mohican language. In it, he presented evidence for the relatedness of Algonquian languages throughout northeastern North America and their distinctness from the neighboring Iroquoian languages. Edwards' work on New World linguistic classification paralleled that of his contemporary, William Jones, on the Indo-European languages. In his report, "Observation on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians...", Jonathan Edwards observes the Mohican language "have no diversity of gender, either in nouns or pronouns". He also observed that Mohican can also use plural forms just by adding an extra morpheme to the singular form. Such as the singular word for boy is penumpaufoo and the plural form is penumpaufoouk for boys. The Mohican language does not contain any adjectives, instead neuter verbs are used to express the qualities. References Edwards, Jonathan, 1787. Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians, in Which the Extent of that Language in North America is Shewn, its Genius is Grammatically Traced, Some of its Peculiarities, and Some Instances of Analogy between that and the Hebrew are Pointed out. Josiah Meigs, New Haven, Connecticut. Gamertsfelder, Sarah. http://www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/scholars/HSP03.EAA6.Gamertsfelder.pdf. America’s