98 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



ing thus 1200 distinct vocables, the language would be complete for 

 all essential purposes. Few uncivilized communities have a greater 

 number of primitive words in ordinary use. How the highly civil- 

 ized and literaiy Chinese manage to express with their limited vocabu- 

 lary a vast range of ideas is easily understood. Much is accomj^lished 

 by the mei'e effect of position, — a method which is almost as fruitful 

 in language as in arithmetic. Thus td signifies great, or greatness ; 

 jin, man or manly : td jln is " great man ; " jin td, manly greatness. 

 Jin may become a verb, as in the expression quoted by R^musat 

 from the discourse of a Chinese author against the Buddhist monas- 

 teries, Ji?i khi jin, literally " man those men," i.e., make men of those 

 persons who are not now acting the part of men. So, in English, we 

 can say a " man-child " and a " child-man." A merchant-captain will 

 "ship a man" to "man his ship." What is with us an occasional 

 practice is the regular habit of the Chinese language. To this should 

 be added the use of conjoint expressions, in which each part explains 

 the other. Thus tdo has twelve meanings in Chinese, and makes, in 

 fact, twelve words, totally distinct, and each represented by its own 

 wiitten character. Among these meanings are to lead, to rob, to 

 cover, a flag, cereal grain, and wat/. Loil has seven significations, 

 with as many charactei'S, comprising dew, cormorant, to suborn, and 

 road. When these two words are united in the form of tdo loii, to 

 express a single idea, that idea can only be the one common to both, 

 namely way or road.^ The combined form is not properly a com- 

 pound or a dissyllable, as each woi'd retains its tonic accent ; but the 

 method, nevertheless, gives to the language the same means of avoid- 

 ing ambiguity, and of enlarging its vocabulary, which are possessed 

 by the synthetic tongues. From chad, book, and fang, house, we 

 have choH-fdng, book-house, i.e., library ; from khi, begging, and jln, 

 man, khi-jin, beggar ; from tldan, heaven, and niii, daughter, thidn- 

 niu, heaven's offspring, which, by a poetical metonymy, has become the 

 ordinary name of the swallow. f In this way, the language, with its 

 scanty list of primitive vocables, has been made sufficient for the 

 needs of an elaborate culture and an extensive literature. 



The child who at two yeai-s of age could pronounce only the sim- 



- Grammaire Chinoise, p. 108. The English "roadway" offers a curious resemblance to this 

 expression, 

 fib., p. 111. The pronunciation of the Chinese words is given in the French orthography. 



