and
“full” and “empty words,” respectively, the former being subdivided into
“living words” or verbs, and
“dead words” or noun-substantives. By “empty words” particles are meant, though sometimes the expression is loosely applied to abstract terms, including verbs. The above meagre classification is their nearest approach to a conception of grammar in our sense. This in itself does not prove that a Chinese grammar is impossible, nor that, if constructed, it might not be helpful to the student. As a matter of fact, several attempts have been made by foreigners to deduce a grammatical system which should prove as rigid and binding as those of Western languages, though it cannot be said that any as yet has stood the test of time or criticism. Other writers have gone to the other extreme, and maintained that Chinese has no grammar at all. In this dictum, exaggerated as it sounds, there is a very substantial amount of truth. Every Chinese character is an indivisible unit, representing a sound and standing for a root-idea. Being free from inflection or agglutination of any kind, it is incapable of indicating in itself either gender, number or case, voice, mood, tense or person. Of European languages, English stands nearest to Chinese in this respect, whence it follows that the construction of a hybrid jargon like pidgin English presents fewer difficulties than would be the case, for instance, with pidgin German. For pidgin English simply consists in taking English words and treating them like Chinese characters, that is, divesting them of all troublesome inflections and reducing them to a set of root-ideas arranged in logical sequence. “You wantchee my no wantchee” is nothing more nor less than literally rendered Chinese:
“Do you want me or not?” But we may go further, and say that no Chinese character can be definitely regarded as being any particular part of speech or possessing any particular function absolutely, apart from the general tenor of its context. Thus, taken singly, the character
