Note 2 — PART 1. ON SOUND.

The analogy between the Chinese tones and the Greek accents probably led the Catholic Missionaries to call the former accentus. The distinction between accent and quantity which existed in Greek, has been found also in Sanscrit in the Vedas. (Vide Bopp’s Sanscrit Grammar, section 80.) In both, there were three accents, acute, grave and circumflex. The grave is described as the negation of the acute and to be understood where that mark is not written. The acute was a rising in tone; while the circumflex is said to have raised and depressed the tone on the same syllable. (Vide Valpy’s, Greek Grammar.) Taking accent and quantity together, we obtain four distinctions of sound, which is the nominal number of tones in Chinese. The fundamental difference in the structure of polysyllabic and monosyllabic languages prevents the analogy from being carried far; the tones in one case being fixed to syllables, and in the other to words. But when it is remembered that those two branches of the great Indo-European stem are among the most ancient of languages, not much later in origin than the Chinese itself, and one of them its geographical neighbour, the fact of these delicate differences of sound existing till now in that language, becomes interesting as throwing light on some of the most precious remains of the literature of the past. Grammarians would not speak with such hesitation, as they do, when describing these peculiar intonations of the civilized races of the old world, if they had heard and could discriminate the Chinese tones. Late speculations on the change in language-forming power that has taken place in modern times, have referred to the gradual diminution of inflexions in new languages, and to other circumstances, as instances of it. From these has been argued the decay of a certain faculty once possessed by the human race. The limited use of accents fixed to words in newly-formed languages, may be viewed as another illustration of it. Clearly-marked alphabetical differences, as now preferred to those nicer distinctions of sounds, which perhaps were familiar alike to the most cultivated branches of the Great Arian family, and to the ancient and modern Chinese. It may be added that the use of many of the Hebrew accents is but imperfectly known in modern times.