original words are not easily distinguished. 1 Bazin, the pupil of Julien, at one time maintained that literary Chinese was the contraction of a polysyllabic vulgar tongue. Whatever estimate be put on these opinions, there are many reasons which make it difficult to believe that the actual root-sounds represent an early epoch of speech. There is nothing primitive about them. 2 With few exceptions they neither suggest imitation of natural sounds nor typical relations of the human organs to special forms of natural feeling. 3 It is perhaps true that it would require a more subtle physiology than we now possess to trace such relations in Chinese words. But, on the other hand, instead of proving that to every elementary sound a special meaning is prescribed by organic law, the facts of language seem almost to indicate that every sound may become the symbol of every idea. " Why should the Chinese express greatness by the syllable fa, the Aryan by ma, the Semite by ga ? " 4 To all appearance, certainly, the Chinese roots are as artificial as can well be conceived, and their simple and regular structure strongly suggests elaboration for purposes of compact and terse expression. 5 Such expression is a marked trait of the national mind, and its influence is everywhere visible in the history of the language as a whole. There is no reason why words should not share the impulse. Their uniformity is the strongest evidence that they are a product of national art. So strikingly do the supposed " roots " differ from the earliest vocables of other races, that they form a positive instance of that specialism in races, which is likely to be substituted for
Bastian, Peking, p. 54.
Edkins ascribes the defect of consonantal endings to the falling off of certain final mutes during the last twelve hundred years in the North and West of China, which he finds still extant in Kwan-tung and Fo-kien, and in the old national poetry. (Internat. Congr. of Orientalists ; London, 1874.)
St. Denys is, I think, peculiar in his views of the abundance of imitative forms. (Poesies des T'ang, p. 95.)
See Benlaw, p. 118.
The English language illustrates this tendency to simplify and shorten words.
