trace is left in English of substantives in ung. Although, as I said, it might seem more plausible to look on the modern participle in English as originally an adjective in ing, such popular phrases as a-going, a-thinking, point rather to the verbal substantives in ing, as the source from which the modern English participle was derived. "I am going' is in reality a corruption of "I am a-going," i.e. "I am on going," and the participle present would thus be traced back to a locative case of a verbal noun.1 Let us remember, then, that the place of the participle present may, in the progress of dialectic regeneration, be supplied by the locative or some other case of a verbal noun. Now let us look to French. On the 3d of June, 1679, the French Academy decreed that the participles of the present should no longer be declined.2 What was the meaning of this decree? Simply what may now be found in every. French grammar, namely, that commençant, finissant, are indeclinable when they have the meaning of the participle present, active or neuter; but that they take the terminations of the masculine and feminine, in the singular and plural, if they are used as adjectives.3 But what is the reason of this rule ? Simply this, that chantant, if used as a participle, is not the Latin cantans, but the so-called gerund, that is to say, the oblique case of a verbal noun, the Latin cantando corresponding to the English a-singing, while the Latin participle Cf. Garnett's 's paper on the formation of words from inflected cases, Philological Society, vol. iii, No. 54, 1847. Garnett compares the Welsh yn sefyll, in standing, Ir. ag seasamh, on standing, the Gaelic ag sealgadh. The same ingenious and accurate scholar was the first to propose the theory of the participle being formed from the locative of a verbal noun. 2 Cf. Egger, Notions Elémentaires de Grammaire Comparée, Paris, 1856, p. 197. "La règle est faite. On ne declinera plus les participes présents." (B. Jullien, Cours Supérieur, i. p. 186.) 3 Diez, Vergleichende Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, ii. p. 114. present, cantans, is used in the Romance languages only as an adjective, for instance, "une femme souffrante," &c. Here, then, we see, again, that in analytical languages the participle present can be supplanted by the oblique case of a verbal noun. Let us now look to a more distant, yet to a cognate language, like Bengali. We there find that the so-called infinitive is formed by te, which te is at the same time the termination of the locative singular. Hence the present, Karitechi, I am doing, and the imperfect, Karitechilám, I was doing, are mere compounds of achi, I am, áchilám, I was, with what may be called a participle present, but what is in reality a verbal noun in the locative. Karitechi, I do, means "I am in doing," or "I am a-doing." Now the question arises, does this perfectly intelligible method of forming the participle from the oblique case of a verbal noun, and of forming the present indicative by compounding this verbal noun with the auxiliary verb 'to be,' supply us with a test that may be safely applied to the analysis of languages which decidedly belong to a different family of speech? Let us take the Bask, which is certainly neither Aryan nor Semitic, and which has thrown out a greater abundance of verbal forms than almost any known language. Here the present is formed by what is called a participle, followed by an auxiliary verb. This participle, however, is formed by the suffix an, and the same suffix is used to form the locative case of nouns. For instance, mendia, the mountain; mendiaz, from the mountain; mendian, in the mountain; mendico, for the sake of the mountain. In like manner etchean, in the house; ohean, in the bed. we see again in erorten a locative, or, as it is called, a positive case of the verbal substantive erorta, the root of which would be eror, falling; so that the indicative present of the Bask verb does not mean either I fall, or I am falling, but was intended originally for “I am in the act of falling," or, to return to the point from whence we started, I am afalling. The a in a-falling stands for an original on. Thus aright is on rihte, away is on veg, aback is on bæc, again is on gegen, among is on gemang, &c. This must suffice as an illustration of the principle that what is real in modern formations must be admitted as possible in more ancient formations, and that what has been found to be true on a small scale may be true on a larger scale. I speak thus cautiously, because there is much in the science of language to tempt us to overstep these, the legitimate limits of inductive reasoning. We may infer from the known to the unknown in language tentatively, but not positively. It does not follow, even within so small a sphere as the Aryan family of speech, that what is possible in French is possible in Latin, that what explains Bengali will explain Sanskrit. Still less would it be safe to treat all the languages of the world as if they were but modifications or repetitions of Sanskrit. Mr. Garnett, in an excellent paper on the participle, has traced similar phenomena in a much larger number of languages, and he has even endeavoured to show that the original Indo-European participle, the Latin amans, the Greek TUTTO, the Sanskrit bodhat, were formed on the same principle that they were cases of a verbal noun. 2 In this, however, he has failed, 1 Cf. Dissertation critique et apologétique sur la Langue Basque, (par l'Abbé Darrigol). Bayonne. 2 He takes dravat as a possible ablative, likewise s'as-at, and tan-vat (sic). It would be impossible to form ablatives in ǎt (as) from verbal bases raised by the vikaranas of the as many have failed before and after him, if imagining that what has been found to be true in one portion of the vast kingdom of speech must be equally true in all. This is not so, and cannot be so. Language, though its growth is governed by intelligible principles throughout, was not so uniform in its progress as to repeat exactly the same phenomena at every stage of its life. As the geologist looks for different characteristics when he has to deal with London clay, with Oxford clay, or with old red sandstone, the student of language, too, must be prepared for different formations, even though he confines himself to one stage in the history of language, the inflectional. And if he steps beyond this, the most modern stage, then to apply indiscriminately to the lower stages of human speech, to the agglutinative and radical, the same tests which have proved successful in the inflectional, would be like ignoring the difference between aqueous, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. metamorphic rocks. There are scholars who are incapable of appreciating more than one kind of evidence. No doubt the evidence on which the relationship of French and Italian, of Greek and Latin, of Lithuanian and Sanskrit, of Hebrew and Arabic, has been established, is the most satisfactory'; but such evidence is possible only in inflectional languages that have passed their period of growth, and have entered into the stage of phonetic decay. To call for the same evidence in support of the homogeneousness of the Turanian languages, is to call for evidence which, from the nature of the case, it is impossible to supply. As well might the geologist look for fossils in granite! The Turanian languages allow of no grammati cal petrifactions like those on which the relationship of the Aryan and Semitic families is chiefly founded. If they did, they would cease to be what they are; they would be inflectional, not aggluti native. If languages were all of one and the special tenses, nor would the ablative be so appropriate a case as the locative, for taking the place of a verbal adjective. same texture, they might be unravelled, no doubt, with the same tools. But as they are not—and this is admitted by all-it is surely mere waste of valuable time to try to discover Sanskrit in the Malay dialects, or Greek in the idioms of the Caucasian mountaineers. The whole crust of the earth is not made of lias, swarming with Ammonites and Plesiosauri, nor is all language made of Sanskrit, teeming with Supines and Paulo-pluperfects. If we compare the extreme members of the Polynesian dialects, we find but little agreement in what may be called their grammar, and many of their words seem totally distinct. But, if we compare their numerals, we clearly see that these are common property; we perceive similarity, though at the same time great diversity. We begin to note the phonetic changes that have taken place in one and the same numeral, as pronounced by different islanders; we thus arrive at phonetic laws, and these, in their turn, remove the apparent dissimilarity in other words which at first seemed totally irreconcilable. But mere phonetic decay will not account for the differences between the Polynesian dialects, and, unless we admit the process of dialectic regeneration to a much greater extent than we should be justified in the Aryan and Semitic families, our task of reconciliation would become hopeless. Will it be believed that since the time of Cook five of the ten simple numerals in the language of Tahiti have been thrown off and replaced by new ones? This is, nevertheless, the fact. Two was rua; it is now piti, I tried in one of my former lectures to explain some of the causes which in nomadic dialects produce a much more rapid shedding of words than in literary languages, and I have since received 1 United States Exploring Expedition, under the command of Charles Wilkes. Ethnography and Philology, by H. Hale, vol. vii. p. 289. ample evidence to confirm the views which I then expressed. My excellent friend, the Bishop of Melanesia, of whom it is difficult to say whether we should admire him more as a Christian, or as a scholar, or as a bold mariner, meets in every small island with a new language, which none but a scholar could trace back to the Melanesian type. "What an indication," he writes, "of the jealousy and suspicion of their lives, the extraordinary multiplicity of these languages "affords! In each generation, for aught "I know, they diverge more and more; "provincialisms and local words, &c. 'perpetually introduce new causes for "perplexity." 66 I shall mention to-day but one new, though insignificant, cause of change in the Polynesian languages, in order to show that it is difficult to over-estimate the multifarious influences which are at work in nomadic dialects, constantly changing their aspect and multiplying their number. The Tahitians,2 besides the metaphorical expressions, have another and a more singular mode of displaying their reverence towards their king, by a custom which they term te pi. They cease to employ, in the common language, those words which form a part or the whole of the sovereign's name, or that of one of his near relatives, and invent new terms to supply their place. As all names in Polynesian are significant, and a chief usually has several, it will be seen that this custom must produce a considerable havoc in a language. It is true that this change is only temporary, as, at the death of the king or chief, the new word is dropped, and the original term resumed. But it is hardly to be supposed that after one or two generations the old words should still be remembered and be reinstated. Anyhow, it is a fact, that the missionaries, by employing many of the new terms, give them a permanency which will defy the ceremonial loyalty of the natives. Vancouver observes (Voyage, vol. i. p. 135) that at the accession of Otu, which took place between the visit of Cook 2 Hale, p. 288. and his own, no less than forty or fifty of the most common words, which occur in conversation, had been entirely changed. It is not necessary that all the simple words which go to make up a compound name should be changed. The alteration of one is esteemed sufficient. Thus in Po-mare, signifying "the night (po) of coughing (mare)," only the first word, po, has been dropped, mi being used in its place. So in Ai-mata (eye-eater), the name of the present queen, the ai (eat) has been altered to amu, and the mata (eye) retained. In Tearii-na-vaha-roa (the chief with the large mouth), roa alone has been changed to maoro. It is the same as if with the accession of Queen Victoria, either the word victory had been tabooed altogether, or only part of it, for instance tori, so as to make it high-treason to speak during her reign of Tories, this word being always supplied by another; such, for instance, as Liberal-Conservative. The object was clearly to guard against the name of the sovereign being ever used, even by accident, in ordinary conversation, and this object was attained by tabooing even one portion of his name. "But this alteration," as Mr. Hale remarks, "affects not only the words "themselves, but syllables of similar "sound in other words. Thus the name "of one of the kings being Tu, not "only was this word, which means 'to "stand,' changed to tia, but in the "word fetu, star, the last syllable, though having no connexion, except "in sound, with the word tu, under"went the same alteration-star being now fetia; tui, to strike, became "tiai; and tu pa pau, a corpse, tia "pa pau. So ha, four, having been "changed to maha, the word aha, split, "has been altered to amaha, and murihá, "the name of a month, to muriáha. "When the word ai was changed to 66 amu, maraai, the name of a certain "wind (in Rarotongan, maranai), became "mara-amu." It is equally clear that, if a radical or monosyllabic language, like Chinese, begins to change and to break out in independent dialects, the results must be very different from those which take place in Latin when split up into the Romance dialects. In the Romance dialects, however violent the changes which made Portuguese words to differ from French, there always remain a few fibres by which they hang together. It might be difficult to recognise the French plier, to fold, to turn, in the Portuguese chegar, to arrive, yet we trace plier back to plicare, and chegar to the Spanish llegar, the old Spanish plegar, the Latin plicare,1 here used in the sense of turning towards a place, arriving at a place. But when we have to deal with dialects of Chinese, everything that could possibly hold them together seems hopelessly gone. The language now spoken in Cochin China is a dialect of Chinese, at least as much as Norman French was a dialect of French, though spoken by Saxons at a Norman Court. There was a native language of Cochin China, the Arnamitic, which forms, as it were, the Saxon of that country on which the Chinese, like the Norman, was grafted. This engrafted Chinese, then, is a dialect of the Chinese as spoken in China, and it is most nearly related to the spoken dialect of Canton. Yet few Chinese scholars would recognise Chinese in the language of Cochin. It is, for instance, one of the most characteristic features of the literary Chinese, the dialect of Nankin or the idiom of the Mandarins, that every syllable ends in a vowel, either pure or nasal. In Cochin China,2 on the contrary, we find words ending in k, t, p. Thus, ten is thap, at Canton chap, instead of the Chinese tchi. No 1 Diez, Lexicon, s. v. llegar; Grammar, i. p. 379. 2 Endlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, par. 53, 78, 96. 3 Léon de Rosny, Tableau de la Cochinchinie, p. 295. He gives as illustrations :Annamique. thap dix pouvoir dak houet lam sang forêt Cantonnais. chap tak hæct lam. He likewise mentions double consonants in the Chinese as spoken in Cochin China, namely, bl, dy, ml, ty, tr; also f, r, s. As final consonants he gives, ch, k, m, n, ng, p, t.-P. 293. wonder that the early missionaries described the Annamitic as totally distinct from Chinese. One of them says: "When I arrived in Cochin China, "I heard the natives speak, particularly "the women: I thought I heard the "twittering of birds, and I gave up all "hope of ever learning it. All words are "monosyllabic, and people distinguish "their significations only by means of "different accents in pronouncing them. "The same syllable, for instance, daï, "signifies twenty-three entirely different things, according to the difference of "accent, so that people never speak with"out singing." 1 This description, though somewhat exaggerated, is correct in the main, there being six or eight musical accents or modulations in this as in other monosyllabic tongues, by which the different meanings of one and the same monosyllabic root are kept distinct. These accents form an element of language which we have lost, but which was most important during the primitive stages of human speech. The Chinese language commands no more than 450 distinct sounds, and with them it expresses between 40,000 and 50,000 words or meanings.2 These meanings are now kept distinct by means of composition, or in other languages by derivation, but on the radical stage they would have bewildered the hearer entirely, without some hints to indicate their real intention. We have something left of this faculty in the tone of our sentences. We distinguish an interrogative from a positive sentence by the raising of our voice. (Gone? Gone.) We pronounce Yes very differently when we mean perhaps (Yes, this may be true), or of course (Yes, I know it), or really (Yes? is it true?) or truly (Yes, I will). But in Chinese, in Annamitic (and likewise in Siamese and Burmese), these modulations have a much greater importance. Thus in Annamitic ba pronounced with the grave accent means a lady, an ancestor; pronounced with the sharp accent, it means the favourite of a prince; pronounced with the semi-grave 1 Léon de Rosny, l. c. p. 301. 2 Lectures on the Science of Language, i. P. 270. accent, it means what has been thrown away; pronounced with the grave circumflex, it means what is left of a fruit after it has been squeezed out; pronounced with no accent, it means three; pronounced with the ascending or interrogative accent, it means a box on the ear. Thus Ba, bà, bâ, bá, would mean, if properly pronounced, "Three ladies gave a box on the ear to the favourite of the prince." How much these accents must be exposed to fluctuation in different dialects is easy to perceive. Though they are fixed by grammatical rules, and though their neglect causes the most absurd mistakes, they were clearly in the beginning the mere expression of individual feeling, and therefore liable to much greater dialectic variation than grammatical forms, properly so called. But let us take what we might call grammatical forms in Chinese, in order to see how differently they fare in dialectic dispersion, as compared with the terminations of inflectional languages. Though the grammatical organization of Latin has been well-nigh used up in French, we still see in the s of the plural a remnant of the Latin paradigm. We can trace the one back to the other. But in Chinese, when the plural is formed by the addition of some word meaning multitude, heap, flock, class," what trace of original relationship remains when one dialect uses one, another another word? The plural in Cochin-Chinese is formed by placing fo before the substantive. This fo means many, or a certain number. It may exist in Chinese, but it is certainly not used there to form the plural. the plural. Another word employed for forming plurals is ñung, several, and this again is wanting in Chinese. It fortunately happens, however, that a few words expressive of plurality have been preserved both in Chinese and Cochin-Chinese; as, for instance, choung, clearly the Chinese tchoung,' meaning conflux, vulgus, all, and used as an exponent of the plural; and kak, 1 Endlicher, § 152. |