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Show 72 ON TilE DISTRIBUTION AND oonncctcd, into languages in which the sounds are bound together. Indeed, nearly all the Barman words are monosyllabic; but they have the faculty of modifying themselves in their pronunciation so as to hitch themselves on to the other words, and hence originate a more lHtrmonions vocalization. All t.he basin of the Irawaddy, and Aracan (that is separated from the Burmese empire by a chain of mountains running nearly parallel ~o. the sea, the mounts. Ycoma), are inhabited by tribes speaking 1dwms of the same famtly as the Barman. Little by little, other langnagcs of the same family, such as the Laos have been driven bacl~ from the ~orth.wcst ~f the trans-Gangeti; peninsula by conqucrmg populatwns emanatmg from this Burmese race, which nowa- da~s opposes such an energetic resistance to the English. It is pr Clscly to the same race that belong the more savage populations of .Assam. IT ere, speech and their physical type leave no room for doub~ in :his respect. Of this number are the Singplw and the Manzpourz. Bnt,. that tho Tltibetan is itself nothing but a modification but an alteratwn, of tho languages of this same monosyllabic family: is what becomes apparent to us through the tongues of several tribes of Assam and ?f Amcan,-such as that of the Naga8, and that of the Youmas, ~lnch serve for the transit from the Barman into the Thibetan. These more or less barbarian populations, spread out at the north-west of the trans-Gangetic peninsula, have all tho character of tho race that has been called tho yellow. Evidently it is there that one ~ust seck for tho savage type of the Chinese famny. The Th1betan is certainly that tongue which most detaches 't lf from the monosyllabic family· and by many of 1·ts t 't . 1 . h . . . . ' ' ra1 s, 1t saep - proac es the Dravtd1an 1dwms. It demarcates itself from th B . rn'a n tln · ? ugh. 1't s com bm' atw· ns of particular consonants, of whicch tahie-vocal efrcct 1s sweeter and more mollified· but th · . d . ' e numerous asp1- ratcs an nasa.ls of the Chmese and the Barman are rc-bchcld in it. Upon comparmg the monuments of the ancient Barma t wrth those of the ancient Thibetan, one perceives that fo;:e1~11 ~~~~ language had more of aspority,-aspcrity of which the Thibcta y t'll preserves traces; beca~sc, notwithstanding its combinatio:s s ~f softe~cd .consonants, this language is at the bottom com letcl devoid of harmony. Particles placed after the word modify itsps y and the order f th d · ensc, . . o esc wor s IS always the inverse of what it is in ~ur Hhoms. lienee the apparition, in these tongues of the first ~~ncanm~nts of tohat process of a()'glutination already so c~nspicuous in .o aiman. ne may constru t . 't . posed of disjointed words, link~d 1~c~w:::~a~~tr:~h:~n~~~;e~;~: CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES 73 retro-active virtue, or faculty, of a final word; and it is thus that these languages arrive at rcndol'ing the ideas of time still more complex. The Barman, in particular, is, in this respect, of very great ricbness,-a series of proper names can be treated in it as an unity, and may take on at the end the mark "do" of the p1 ural, which reacts then upon the whole: and even a succession of substantives is susceptible of taking the indefinite plural "mya." Th so languages cause us, therefore, to assist, so to say, at the birth of agglutinative idioms, of which the Basque has aflord a us, in Europe, such a curious specimen. Albeit, whatever be the development that several idioms of the trans-Gangetic peninsula may have acquired through the effects of their successive evolution, they arc all not the less of extreme simplicity. The Barman is the most elabol'atcd of the whole family; whereas the Chinese, and the speech of the empire of Ann am, are but very little. As concerns tho vocal system, on the contrary, the 'l'hibetan and the Barman do not raise 1h rnsclvcs much above the Chinese; and it is in the south of the trans-Gangetic peninsula that one must inquire for more developed articulations, always exercising themselves, however, upon a small number of monosyllabic sounds. On the opposite hand, the tongues of the south-cast of that peninsula approximate more to the Chinese as regards syntax. One sees, then, that, maugre thch· unity, the monosyllabic languages form groups so distinct that one cannot consider them as proccecli ng the ones from the others, but which are respectively connected through divers analogies; and that they must, in cons quence, be placed simply parallel with each other, at distances ever unequal ft·om the original monosyllabism. .Although the Barman and the Tbibotan approach each other very much,- and that they find, in certain idioms, as it were, a frontier in common,-thcy still remain too far asunder with rcO'ard to tho grammar, the vocabulary and the pronunciation, for it to be admitted that one may be dcl'iv d from the other. 'l'hey seem rather to be, according to the observation of MR. LoGAN, two debris differ ntly altered of a more ancient tongue that had the same basis as the Chinese. Thus one must believe that, from a most remote epoch, the yellow race occupies all the south-cast of Asia; because the employment of these monosyllabic languages is a characteristlcal trait which never deceives. In those defiles of Assam where o many diflcrcnt tribes -repelled thither by the conquests of the Aryas, of the Chinese and the Burmese-find themselves ()'ather cl, the races of Tartar-type all distinguish themselves from the Dravidian tongues throtlgh theil |