132 



♦ KNOW^LKDGE ♦ 



[April 2, 1888. 



how the celestial equator was situate with respect to the 

 soathern constellations — (1) at the time corresponding to the 

 building of the Great Pyramid, aud (li) in the days of tlie 

 early Greek astronomers. I would invite special attention to 

 the position of the ship Argo, which was horizontal when cul- 

 minating at the former epoch, aslant in the days of Hippar- 

 chus and Ptolemy, and is now more aslant still. As a ship 

 may be said to be in her natural position when on an even 

 keel, we have in this result evidence of some force to show that 

 the constellation received its name at the earlier period, or 

 more than 3,000 years before the Christian era. At any 

 rate, further inquiry into this question is suggested. 

 {To he continued.) 



EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



By Ada .S. Ballin. 



X.— ROOTS AND THEIR USES. 



AVING spoken of the probable origin of a 

 large number of roots, we can now turn 

 with interest to the use of roots in the 

 various languages known to us. As Mr. 

 Garnett announced in 1849, after a searching 

 analysis of more than eighty languages, word 

 endings were originally uninHected pro- 

 nominal roots, with a locative signification. Roots are all 

 that Ls primitive in language, and sentences are even now 

 found wholly composed of these elements. 



In a private letter to me, Mr. Frederick 11. Balfour — 

 than whom few are more familiar with the Chinese lan- 

 guage and its dialects, as used at the jiresent day, as well as 

 with the classical or literary languige — once observed : 

 " I may safely say that it would be difficult to write one 

 sentence which did not consist of roots, for every character 

 embodies a root idea, and is used for ordinary purposes, in 

 literature as well as conveisation, without inflection." 



According to the manner in which roots are combined, 

 we find three stages of language : — • 



I. The radical, in which, as in Chinese, roots are used 

 independently, supplying the place of all parts oi speech, as 

 « cluing, " employ stick," meaning " with a stick." 



II. The agglutinative, in which two roots may be joined 

 to form a word, in which compound one root may lose its 

 independence, the stage called by Max MiiUer, to whom 

 this classification of language i.s due, the terminational, 

 exemplified by the Turanian family, in which the lOot 

 stands out clear from the termination, as, for example, 

 from the Turkish root hakar, to regard, we have hakarim, 

 hakar-sin, and so in conjugating the verb. 



III. The inflectional, in which two roots may be joined 

 together to form words, both losing their independence in 

 Aryan and Semitic languages. 



As long as every word or part of a word is felt to 

 express its own radical meaning, a language belongs to the 

 first or radical stage. As a specimen of this stage, Chinese 

 is the stock example ; but although it is alwa^'s regarded as 

 a monosyllabic language, a large proportion of its parts of 

 speech are formed of two charactei-s (root words) joined or 

 used in apposition, each of which supplements and explains 

 the other. The combination thus eflected presents a distinct 

 dLssyllable. As Sumner says: — " A word in Chinese //*«;/ 

 consist of one .syllable, but, from the want of grammatical 

 inflections, and from the limited number of .syllables in use, 

 a monosyllable is rarely intelligible when alone ; it generally 

 requires some adjunct to limit or strengthen its meaning." 



Chinese words have neither classification nor inflection, 

 and distinctions of case, number, person, tense, mood, and so 



on, are non-existent. The meaning of a character or word, 

 and its place in the sentence, generally determines to what 

 category of our grammar it belongs ; but frequently auxiliary 

 syllables and particles distinguish the parts of speech. The 

 syllables which serve to strengthen the original notion 

 expressed by the chief syllable denote the (cjent, an object, 

 the completion or expansion of the chief idea, or " are 

 purely formative in character, and produce nouns or verbs, 

 adverbs or adjectives, as conventional u.sage has determined." * 

 A noun, from its position, may become a verb, or it may so 

 stand with another noun as to signify a preposition. 

 Thus hid-shan, " descend a mountain " ; hid-fCimj, " lower 

 room " ; shdn-hid, "at the foot of a mountain," hid in other 

 combinations meaning " below " ; icai, " exterior " ; ivai-ktro, 

 " foreign countries " ; kivo-wni, " out of the country." The 

 Chinese word cannot therefore be regarded as really either 

 noun, verb, or other part of speech, since, under different 

 conditions, but without any change in itself, it may come to 

 represent each in turn. 



Chinese words which may be classed under our head of 

 nouns, as far as regards their use or derivation, may be 

 divided into three kinds : — 1. Primitive nouns, mono- 

 syllables bearing their original signification, and generally 

 used in the monosyllabic or crude form, such as jin, 

 " man " ; fan, " rice " ; ch'a, " tea." The class is not a 

 large one, and the monosyllables are not understood by the 

 ('hinese when pronounced separately, being only used in 

 connection with other words — as "a man," >/i kb {one), jin ; 

 k'ifdn, '• to eat rice " = " to dine " ; fsaicfdn, " early rice " 

 = " breakfast " ; or wan-fan, " late rice " = " dinner " ; and 

 so on. 



2. Nouns derivative, made by the addition of one or 

 more formative syllables — a much more numei'ous class, 

 which always remain nouns, while some of the former class 

 may be used as verbs. The formative syllables in these 

 nouns .serve the same purpose as terminations in inflectional 

 languages. Thus jin, man; kfmg-jin, a workman; sJieii, 

 hand; shwul-sheu, "water hand," a sailor; ilr, infant; 

 nil ilr, " a girl " ; jin-ar, " a man " ; kiii, " family " ; jin-kid, 

 " people." 3. Composite nouns, which are formed by the 

 connection of two or three .syllables, each of which retains 

 its proper signification. 



The same syllable may be repeated, as nal-nal, " married 

 lady of rank " ; or synonyms may be united, as sm-c/idng, 

 " the heart, the feelings " ; or a noun may be formed of two 

 verbs, as Mng-wei, " actions," from two words meaning, ' to 

 do." Nouns expressing the abstract notions of verbs are 

 generally formed in this latter way, just as the infinitive is 

 used in Greek and German — ro TV)(fiir, das Leben, das 

 Haben, and so on. Two adjectives are united to form 

 nouns, as chln-pail, " precious-precious ":=a jewel ; yiu-mun, 

 " sad-sorrowful "^sorrow. Many nouns are formed by 

 placing generic terms, as, for example, the equivalents for 

 tree, stone, fish, &c., after the special object ; as we say 

 limestone, fir-tree, and the like. Words expressive of time 

 and place, generally used as prepositions or adverbs, also 

 enter into the composition of nouns, as in the former exam- 

 ples : tsaii-fdn, " early rice " ; Ger., Friih-stilck, " early 

 piece " ; wdnfdn, " late rice " ; Ger., Abend-brod, " evening 

 bread," for the evening meal, supper; k'ln-ji, " now-day ":= 

 today. Cf. the uses of riv and ttu/Vu. 



The modes of expressing abstract notions are exceed- 

 ingly interesting. A common method is to combine 

 opposites, as " light-heavy "^weight, " many-few "=quan- 

 tity, " long-short "=length, " high-low "=:height, and so 

 on. Others are formed by the addition of such words as 

 ?</'/, breath ; fiing, vfind; 6mi, heart; sing, nature, disposi- 

 tion, faculty : thus — i-h'i, integrity ; lidng-sln, conscience ; 



* Sumner's " Handbook of the Chinese Language," p. 41. 



