Lexicon. This remarkable expedient stands almost alone among linguistic constructions, if we regard the nature of the attempt, or the scale on which it is applied. Such an immense and varied use of intonations which in other races are expressive of emotions, purely for phonetic needs, belongs, of course, to China alone. It is difficult to accept any exact period for its beginning.[1] We should say of the Chinese tone-language that neither Shemitic alphabet nor Aryan inflection is a more positive mark of continued culture than this artificial interweaving of the principle of separating tone from feeling with the whole speech of a people. Observe how entirely it is in accordance with the national genius for minute detail in all kinds of сonstruction. There are eight or nine of these tones in the Southern dialects, and five in the Mandarin. A natural expedient of monosyllabism, and generally found connected with it, tones are here worked out in so systematic a form as scarcely to suggest such simple relations; and the result is a monument at once of national receptivity and art.
Divination of meaning
Finally, the hearer supplies defects of grammatical construction by inference and association, based on a common stock of traditions and customs. This is of made necessary by an elliptical style deficient in conjunctive particles, which are the articulation of the body of speech. Thus linguistic divination has been elaborated to an extent which shows what a magnetic force may be reached by mutual understanding in a great and ancient people. Scholars like Julien admit the absolute necessity of minute acquaintance with national habits and history to enable them to interpret a sign-language which does but hint its meaning. There can be no evidence of maturity in a language more striking than the instinctive supply of its unexpressed logical connections, by long practice, out
- ↑ The Chinese ascribe its introduction to Buddhist monks in the time of the Tsi and Leang dynasties (Schott, p. 49); but we cannot suppose it to have been imposed at a given period by invention, and without root in the previous habits of the people.
