Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex: with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs — John Shaqi
Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex: with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya GlyphsGates, William
History
Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex: with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs
Gates, William
Codex Peresianus; Maya language -- Texts; Mayas -- History
And the very fact that Chinese has had to depend on placement of its
monosyllables to express all the relations for which speech is called
upon, instead of relying on changes of form, seems to have, and indeed
has so stimulated the development of pure linguistic power that the
language is actually as perfect and clear a medium of cultured and
learned intercourse, as is the Sanskrit, the supreme type of the
so-called most developed form, the inflectional. And by reason of its
possession of the ideographic element it has a vividness which the
Sanskrit has not. No language can be a highly developed one which does
not provide in some way for the expression of all possible needed
relations between the three fundamental postulates of life and
activity--the self, the action and the world; and Chinese does this in
spite of its monosyllabic structure by the development of its syntax of
position. And it should be remembered further that Chinese syntax, in
strict correspondence to the genius of the language, is not the same
formal thing that syntax is with our inflectional tongues, but includes,
or rather is primarily based on the _harmonic adjustment of the inherent
basic ideas of or within the words_. The Chinese monosyllables are then
not the naked separate things they are in the dictionary, but the whole
phrase or sentence is on the contrary as much a unit as one of ours; and
often more so.
This integral unity of the whole sentence or expression, dominated by a
perspective of ideas rather than of forms, which is achieved in Chinese
by the elaboration of placement, is also characteristic of the structure
of the languages of the American continent; but, these languages being
polysyllabic, the vividness and unity are attained by a method described
as Incorporation, whereby the accessories of relation are so included in
or attached to the leading word that the whole expression assumes the
form and sound of a single word. And a similar process takes place with
the various elements of a compound sentence. So that although this one
of the divisions of language approaches very closely to the Inflectional
in its external forms, it yet has held to the vividness and essential
characteristics of the ideographic method. And it is a point of the
utmost importance for the decipherment of the Maya glyphs, to note as
has been stated before, that their syntax of combination must follow
that of the spoken language, which we know.
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