alluvial plain of the Hoang-ho or Yellow River, perhaps at the same time that an independent civilization was arising in the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates. Since those early days the language has changed greatly; phonetic decay has been busy with the dictionary, tones have been introduced to express relations of grammar, position and syntax have been replaced by "empty words," which have come to be mere grammatical symbols like our to or of, and the whole speech has grown. old and weather-beaten. It is the Mandarin dialect which chiefly shows these marks of ruin; here the initial and final consonants have been dropped one by one until every word save one1 ends with the same monotonous nasal. Elsewhere, however, the dialects have displayed a more strenuous resistance. In the north, indeed, the primitive seat of Chinese power, no less than three final consonants have been lost, but along the southern bank of the Yang-tsi-kiang, and through Chekiang to Fuh-kien, Dr. Edkins tells us, the old initials are still preserved. As has been noticed in a former chapter, it is partly by means of these dialects, partly by the help of the ancient rhymed poetry, partly by a thorough investigation of the written characters that Dr. Edkins and Prof. de Rosny have been enabled to restore the original pronunciation of Chinese words, and to trace the gradual decay of this pronunciation first in the long ages that preceded Confucius (B.C. 551-477), and then in the centuries that have followed. As sounds disappeared, and words formerly distinct came to assume the same form, a new device was needed for marking the difference 1 Eul, "two" and "ear."

1

between them. This was found in the multiplication of the tones, which now number eight, though only four are in common use, the tones playing a similar constructive part in Chinese to that played by analogy in our own family of speech. It takes about 1200 years, says Dr. Edkins, to produce a new tone. But from the first the words of Chinese are monosyllabic; there may have been, and probably was, a time when polysyllables existed, as they still do in Tibetan,1 but all record of it has perished. In spite, therefore, of the tones, the same word has often a great variety of meanings, as in Old Egyptian; thus yu is "me;" "agree," "rejoice,” “measure," "stupid," "black ox,” and lu, “turn aside,” “forge," "vehicle," "precious stone," "dew,” “way.”

"In Chinese," says Prof. Steinthal," the smallest real whole is a sentence, or at least a sentence-relation, or perhaps a group of roots, which, even if it is not yet a sentence, or a sentence-relation, is still something more or other than a word. Thus while other languages can form words and sentences, Chinese can form only sentences, and its grammar really resolves itself into syntax." In fact, when once we know the prescribed order of words in a Chinese sentence, we are virtually masters of its grammar. The subject always comes first, the direct object follows the word expressing action, and the genitive, like the attribute, precedes the noun that governs it. The defining word, in short, stands before the word

1 See Böhtlingk: "Sprache der Jakuten," p. xvii. note 46, who observes that several Tibetan roots that are now monosyllabic can be proved to have once been polysyllabic.

2" Charakteristik,” p. 113.

it defines, the completing word after the word it completes. Nowhere is the order of the Chinese sentence better illustrated than in the ideographic use of the Chinese characters in Japanese, which are read as though they were Japanese. Thus, in order to express the words, "but I shall not see him to-day," in this mode of writing, the characters would follow one another in the order required in Chinese, "but not shall I see to-day him," but they would be read by the Japanese in exactly the reverse order, "him shall I see to-day not but." It must not be assumed, however, that the order of the sentence follows one hard and fast rule. We have just seen that while the genitive and attribute precede the noun, the object follows the verb, to which it might be supposed to stand in much the same relation as the attribute to the noun. Sentences which express the purpose, again, follow the principal clause, as do also "objective substantival sentences" in most cases, although adjectival, temporal, causal, and conditional ones precede it. Though each word has its own fixed place, that place depends upon logic and rhythm, and not upon a general law which forces every part of the sentence into the same mould. Literary development has doubtless had much to do with this result, and inversions of the established order which were first introduced by the requirements of rhetoric have now made their way into the current speech. In sharp contrast to this comparative flexibility of Chinese. stands the stereotyped arrangement of the Burmese or

1 The Chinese ideographs are called koyé or won (Chinese yin), the Japanese reading of them, yomi or kun or tóků. See Hoffmann : "Japanese Grammar," 1st edition, pp. 32, 46.

the Siamese sentence. Here no distinction is made between the different grammatical relations of a sentence or the different kinds of sentences; in Siamese or T'hai every word which defines another must follow it, in Burman it must equally precede. No account is taken of the fact that the nature of the definition cannot always be alike. Hence the inability of these languages to denote the various turns of expression, the various forms of sentence and syntax, that we find in Chinese: hence, too, the greater need of auxiliary or "empty" words to avoid the uncertainty occasioned by the constant application of one unbending law of position.

Not that Chinese, especially modern Chinese, dispenses with those symbolic auxiliaries which Prof. Earle has christened "presentives;" just as the Old English flectional genitive in -s is making way for the analytical genitive with "of," so the Old Chinese genitive of position may now be replaced by the periphrastic genitive with ti or "of." Ti, originally meaning "place," has now come to be merely a relative pronoun, marking the genitive, the adjective and participle, the possessive pronoun, and even the adverb as well. So, too, the plural, the dative, the instrumental, the locative, and the like, may all be denoted by particles instead of by position only. These particles are merely worn-out substantives, twi, for instance, the symbol of the dative, having once meant "opposition," tsung, the symbol of the locative, "the middle." Similarly person and time may be expressed by pronouns, adverbs, and auxiliary verbs, not by syntax merely. In fact, the same tendency towards increasing clearness of expression which has shown itself in the

modern languages of Europe, has also shown itself in Chinese. Less has been left to suggestion; thought has been able to find a fuller and distincter clothing for itself, and requires less to be understood by another. Science needs to be precise, and it is in the direction of science, that is to say, of accurate and formulated knowledge, that all civilization must tend. Language is ever becoming a more and more perfect instrument of thought; the vagueness and imperfection that characterized the first attempts at speech, the first hints of the meaning to be conveyed, have gradually been replaced by clearness and analysis. It is true that language must always remain more or less symbolic and suggestive; it can neither represent things as they are, nor embody exactly the thought that conceives them; to the last we must understand in speech more than we actually hear. As Chaignet has said,' "Les rapports nécessaires ne s'expriment presque jamais; les plus grossiers d'entre les hommes sont encore des

ils s'entendent à demi-mot; ils parlent par sousentendus ;" and Prof. Bréal has emphasized the fact under the name of "the latent ideas of language," calling attention to the manifold relations and senses in which a single word like company is understood according to the connection in which it is found.

Words, and the ideas which lie behind them, define and explain each other. It is by comparison and limitation that science marches forward: it is by the same. means that the dictionary is enlarged and made clear. Nowhere is this fact better known than in the isolating

1 "La Philosophie de la Science du Langage étudiée dans la Formation des Mots " (1875), p. 83.