April 2, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



133 



min-j'ung, nationality; iih'in-k''i, sadness. Others are formed 

 in the same way as the other nouns mentioned above : thus 

 mal-mai, " to buy — to sell "=:trade ; fdn-pi, " to divide — to 

 distinguish "^difference ; siaii-stn, " little-heart "^atten- 

 tion, and so on. 



Diminutives are formed by the addition of words sig- 

 nifying "little" or "small," "child" and "infant." The 

 distinctions of gender and number are similarly made by 

 words prefixed or suffixed to the principal word, iidu male, 

 and nil female being prefixed to jin to express the gender 

 of the person spoken of, and kung "male," and mu 

 " mother " to names of animals, in order to distinguish 

 their gender. The plural is expressed bj- the reduplication 

 of the word, by prefixing some syllable meaning " all," 

 "many," or "class," or by employing a numeral. The only 

 case which can be distinguished by the form of the expres- 

 sion is the genitive, indicated by the particles <? in speaking, 

 and c/(7 in books; these are by nature demonstratives, and 

 stand for the English apostrophe s, 's or s'. 



Chinese adjectives may be divided into three classes in the 

 same way as nouns ; some may be looked upon as primitive, 

 being seldom used in any but an adjectival relation, for 

 example hau, "good" is generally used as an adjective, 

 though, with a change of tone, it is hau, " to love." 



Some monosyllables are used as verbs ; but they are 

 almost always assisted by some other syllable of cognate 

 meaning, and thus the spoken language of China is poly- 

 syllabic rather than monosyllabic, as it is usually supposed 

 to be. There is no distinction between active and passive, 

 person and number, the context guiding to the meaning, and 

 niocle and time are similarly shown by the context and the 

 conditions under which the sentence is spoken. The com- 

 position of verbs is similar to that of nouns, they being formed 

 by (a) repetition as k'au-k'a u " look, look " = look ;(/>) bj- joining 

 an auxiliary to the primitive, as tie-si, " fall, die "= fall 

 down dead ; (c) by prefixing to one verb another denoting 

 power, ori<jin, desire, intention, kc, as k'l, " arise, begin," 

 k'l-tso, " begin to do " ; (rf) by placing verbs before or after 

 others to denote intention or completion of the action, as 

 Una, to finish, si-liau, " is or was dead," ?, " already," l-chi, 

 " has arrived " ; thus the past tense is expressed, and the 

 future may be indicated by the addition of syllables meaning 

 wish, approach, certainly, and the like, thus, " wish go " for 

 v;ill or shall go, " approach do " for shall do or about to do, 

 " certainly walk " for shall icalk or must u-alk ; («) by uniting 

 two verbs as in (6), but the union of which gives a different 

 meaning to its parts, as ki-fi, " to record, obtain "= to 

 remember, tseii-k'ai, " walk open "^ to inalk airai/ ; (_/') by 

 adding the proper object to the verb, like the cognate 

 accusative in Greek, a new verb being thus formed, as kt 

 or chi-Jan, "eat rice," for eat (any meal), t'Jng-mhig, "ILsten 

 to, order "^ obey ; there are still other forms, but these 

 sufficiently indiftxte the system. Many nouns are used as 

 verbs, the context only determining to which part of speech 

 they belong ; these are always monosyllables, as tien=^a 

 point, dot, also to jnmctuate, to blot out, to light, to nod ; 

 tau=:a road, reason, also to say ; schvjo-kivd=conversatio7i, 

 also to talk. 



By a change in tone when .speaking, the voice and kind 

 of the verb may be changed, an active verb becoming 

 passive, or a transitive neuter or causative — as vet, " to 

 make, to do," changes into wei, " to be made," " to be 

 considered as." 



A verb standing alone or as the first word in a clause 

 generally serves as an imperative. The imperative is also 

 marked by auxiliaries, signifying to invite or beg, to cause, 

 call, exhort, and the like. The passive voice is sometimes 

 expressed by auxiliaries, meaning " to receive," " to meet 

 with," " to suflfer," and so on. 



In Chinese, then, the roots, although combined to express 

 one idea, maintain their individuality of form, but signs are 

 not wanting to show that eveu here the same agencies are 

 at work which have brought other languages to the agglutina- 

 tive stage in which the meaning of one root is lost, so that 

 in the formation of the new word it becomes a mere 

 appendage. Thus in Chinese " ten " is shX, and " two " is dr, 

 for " twenty " the two are joined, and we have dr-shX; this 

 process is clear, but a knowledge of the structure of lan- 

 guage enables us to perceive that tventy was also originally 

 Ivo X ten. In Chinese what corresponds to our loctitive is 

 formed in several ways, as by adding such words as chilng, 

 the middle, or niii, inside. An old word J, meaning to 

 use, forms the instrumental, as the classical i chang, with a 

 stick. In Sanscrit every substantive has a locative — for 

 example, hrid heart, hridi in the heart, the short i repre- 

 senting the same I'oot which produced the preposition in, so 

 that, like the similar Chinese usage, liridi meant literally 

 heart-trithin. Other cases and the various forms of the 

 verb have been shown to have arisen in the same manner. 



As soon as such words as li in uo-li, " at home," li 

 originally metining " interior," in, or I in i chamj, with a 

 stick, lose their etymological meaning, and become mere 

 signs of derivation or of case, language enters on the second 

 or terminational stage. By far the largest number of 

 languages belong to this stage. 



Thus in C!hine.<e, and more especially in some of its 

 dialects, a rudimentary form of agglutination may be 

 observed. Modern Chinese are not aware that the locative 

 suffix li, as in im-U, oiiginally meant "interior," and in the 

 Shanghai dialect loo is to speak as a verb ; woda, a noun 

 " word " with trod-aka, used like our genitive ; fang-woda as 

 accus;itive, and pela woda as a dative. Similarly in 

 agglutinative languages traces of infiection have been dis- 

 covered. There is partial blending of termination and root 

 in some Kalmuck dialects, and in Tamil the derivative 

 tukharn, " sleep," has not retained the proper form of its 

 root t.iingd, while in Turkish still further advances towards 

 inflectional forms have been made. 



STRANGE WHIST HAND. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



OBSERVE that many English papers contain 

 an account of a case in which the dealer at 

 whist held all the trumps — and aU repeat the 

 mi.stake of asserting that according faj Professor 

 Pole the chance of such an event is but one in 

 639,013,559,600 I feel sure Professor Pole 

 never fell into such a mistake. The chance is 

 really one in 158,753,389,900 ; but the a jn-iori' pro- 

 bability that any player will hold thirteen cards of a named 

 suit is that quoted from .some misunderstood statement of 

 Professor Pole's. The subject is dealt with fully at pp. 190, 

 and 19-1:-197, in my " How to Play Whist," under the title 

 " Whist Whittlings." 



It is also a mistake to suppose that because there is but 

 one case among 158,753,389,900 possible dealings at whist in 

 which all the trumps go to the dealer, therefore so many 

 trials would be required to give an even chance of such an 

 event. To illustrate the fallacy underlying such a statement 

 — there are two possible events in coin tossing, but it does 

 not require two trials to give an even chance of tossing 

 head. Half that /lumber suffices. In articles of mine on 

 Probabilities in former numbers of Knowledge, this point is 

 fully considered, and the proper ratio determined. 



I may touch on these points again in " Our Whist 

 Column " later. 



