Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/626

68 attention to this fact and also points out how that in the shi-tsé and hiu-tsé, i.e. “full-word” and “empty-word” of Chinese Grammarians we have the beginnings of agglutinization in this extremely monosyllabic language. It is probable that the ideographs with which Chinese is written has kept the language as it is, without radical change, for so many hundreds of years. Without them there would undoubtedly have been more change and much more agglutinization. Illustrations of compound or agglutinated or combinatory Chinese words are very abundant in Japonico-Chinese and many might be given as illustrations. But as the question here refers to Chinese exclusively I will give those only I find have been examined by Max Müller. Thus, shi, “an arrow,” jin, “a man,” shijin, “master of arrows.” Shui, “water,” fu, “a man,” shui-fu, “a water carrier.” Shui, “water,” sheu, “hand,” shui-sheu, “a steerman.” Kin, “gold,” tsiang, “maker;” kin-tsiang, “a gold-smith.” Shou, “writtingwriting [sic];” sheu, “hand,” shou-sheu, “a copyist.”

The construction of the Ainu language as spoken to-day, and as exemplified in Dobrotvorski’s work, clearly points back to a time when Ainu was as monosyllabic in nature and construction as Chinese itself, for in a very large number of words the various component roots may be easily seen. And that Siberian Ainu is of an older form than that spoken in Yezo is sufficiently proved by the fact that the present day Ainu of Saghalien retain many plural particles in their speech which thesethose [sic] of Yezo drop altogether. Besides the very long words, such for example as those given in section 3 the shorter ones are also worthy of attention. Take the words and ; both of which mean “hare,” as illustrations. ; is an objective particle whose root meaning is “towards”;  means “torn”; “slit”;  is sometimes a plural intransitlve form of, "to do.” Hence  meanmeans [sic] “the torn” or “slit one.” Why? anAn [sic] examination of the lip of this animal will soon tell us. The same word appears in , “a hare-lipped person,” and also in , “ragged.” Turn now to . What is its derivation? . Three roots. , an intensifying prefix;