Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/27

Rh and also (2) those called agglutinating or affixing, in which the grammar is formed entirely by suffixes and prefixes which are still easily separated and retain to some extent their own independent meanings. In the former, or Organic division, he places (3) those languages whose roots are subject to modifications from within, and in which the grammatical distinctions are expressed by inflections. He puts Chinese in the first, or lowest class, as a monosyllabic uninflected language, in which the particles denoting modifications in the meaning of a root are single syllables having always a separate and independent existence. The Chinese roots never sprout nor yield a branch or leaf of inflection; they are thus merely lifeless, inorganic products.

W. von Schlegel followed, and divided languages into three great classes, those without any grammatical structure, the agglutinating, and the inflectional. Then we have Bopp, who approved of this division, but distinguished the classes in a manner somewhat different. In the first he placed languages which had no real roots and did not admit of composition, and hence were without organism and grammar. To this class he assigns Chinese, in which everything seems — and only seems — to be root and nothing more, the categories of grammar and the dependent relations being indicated only by the position of the words in the sentence. In the second class, Bopp placed languages with monosyllabic roots capable of being compounded. His third class comprises those languages which have dissyllabic roots with three indispensable consonants necessary to express the original or primitive meaning. Bopp also denied to Chinese the possession of roots, and what seemed to be such were not so actually. Then we have W. von Humboldt, who had studied Chinese and could compare it with Burmese and other Eastern languages. He placed it along with the Semitic and Indo-European groups, under the head of "Perfect Languages," as one of those which developedeveloped [sic] themselves, according to the law of their being, with regularity and freedom. Humboldt did not regard Chinese as related to Burmese either in origin or in structure. An important distinction of Chinese is that in it the speaker or writer trusts entirely to the mental activity of his hearer or reader and to the