tenses. It distinguishes cases by prepositions, has a full supply of pronouns, three ways of denoting numerals, and a special sign for the plural, as well as the device of doub- ling words for the same purpose.[1] For some of these objects it has transformed certain verbs and nouns into particles or qualifying signs, thenceforth called "empty" words, in distinction from these which retain their independent force, and are hence called "full."[2]
How ambiguities are checked
It knows how to check the ambiguities arising from multifold meanings of the same word. Many terms have distinctive force; particles that always give a negative, or a possessive, or a verbal sense to the word they qualify,—particles transitive or copulative. Even the pauses and end of a sentence are marked by words or sounds, analogous to our rising and falling accents.
The special sense in which a word is to be understood is further indicated by combining a general term with the special one whose meaning is to be defined; by bringing together synonyma to direct the mind to their common meaning, or by symbolic compounds, neither of which alone could express the idea,—as "head-eye" (overseer), "forest-king" (tiger). All these ways are familiar to English use. Determinatives are added to specify classes. Numbers are affixed to designate wholes; as "the four seas;" "the hundred grains;" "the hundred families," or whole nation. These are all products of grammatical elaboration, and show how very far the language is from primitive and inorganic.
Uses of the "tones."
Among such products we may count the expedient of determinative tones, by which the four hundred and fifty monosyllables are multiplied threefold, and materials afforded for combination to the extent of supplying with sounds the fifty thousand signs in the Kang-hi
