CHAPTER IV.
ON THE INTERJECTIONAL AND IMITATIVE ELEMENTS IN THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.
The faculty of speech, as we have seen, is regarded by Chinese philosophers as a part of man's natural endowment. But this faculty needs the guidance and control of the most highly endowed men for its proper application and right development. These men give fit names and correct forms of expression for the various objects of sense, the processes of thought and feeling, and all the outward acts of life. There are, however, expressive sounds made by the human voice with which the king and the philosopher do not interfere. Such sounds are prompted by nature and own no law save that of use and wont. The curious scholar may note them down as he hears them from the lips of the people. He may tell also with explanatory theory how the common speech of one district has a set of natural sounds which differs from that in the speech of another district. But more than this neither ruler nor philosopher will attempt, or, attempting, will achieve.
The naturally expressive sounds here referred to are the cries, calls, mimicking noises, and all the picturesque expressions which we are wont to have classified as Interjectional or Emotional and Imitative Language. It will be seen as we proceed that in Chinese as in other languages some of the involuntary and inarticulate ejaculations are adopted into the family of words, and that mere mimicking sounds may come to be used as names or epithets. Until lately such utterances as these were treated by grammarians and philologists with contempt and neglect, and it is only since the impartial and methodical study of language arose that they have come to acquire dignity and importance.
