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The Soul of the Far East-Part9_Percival Lowell(1855-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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to be pushed, not pulled along.



The want of a copula is another instance of the primitive character

of the tongue. It has its counterpart in our own baby-talk, where a



quality is predicated of a thing simply by placing the adjective in

apposition with the noun.



That the Japanese word which is commonly translated "is" is in no

sense a copula, but an ordinary intransitive verb, referring to a



natural state, and not to a logical condition, is evident in two

ways. In the first place, it is never used to predicate a quality



directly. A Japanese does not say, "The scenery is fine," but

simply, "Scenery, fine." Secondly, wherever this verb is indirectly



employed in such a manner, it is followed, not by an adjective, but

by an adverb. Not "She is beautiful, but "She exists beautifully,"



would be the Japanese way of expressing his admiration. What looks

at first, therefore, like a copula turns out to be merely an



impersonal intransitive verb.

A negative noun is, of course, an impossibility in any language,



just as a negative substantive, another name for the same thing, is

a direct contradiction in terms. No matter how negative the idea to



be given, it must be conveyed by a positive expression. Even a void

is grammatically quite full of meaning, although unhappily empty in



fact. So much is common to all tongues, but Japanese carries its

positivism yet further. Not only has it no negative nouns, it has



not even any negative pronouns nor pronominal adjectives,-- those

convenient keepers of places for the absent. "None" and "nothing"



are unknown words in its vocabulary, because the ideas they

represent are not founded on observed facts, but upon metaphysical



abstractions. Such terms are human-born, not earth-begotten

concepts, and so to the Far Oriental, who looks at things from the



point of view of nature, not of man, negation takes another form.

Usually it is introduced by the verbs, because the verbs, for the



most part, relate to human actions, and it is man, not nature, who

is responsible for the omission in question. After all, it does



seem more fitting to say, "I am ignorant of everything," than

"I know nothing." It is indeed you who are wanting, not the thing.



The question of verbs leads us to another matter bearing on the

subject of impersonality; namely, the arrangement of the words in a



Japanese sentence. The Tartar mode of grammaticalconstruction is

very nearly the inverse of our own. The fundamental rule of



Japanese syntax is, that qualifying words precede the words they

qualify; that is, an idea is elaborately modified before it is so



much as expressed. This practice places the hearer at some awkward

preliminary disadvantage, inasmuch as the story is nearly over



before he has any notion what it is all about; but really it puts

the speaker to much more trouble, for he is obliged to fashion his



whole sentence complete in his brain before he starts to speak.

This is largely in consequence of two omissions in Tartar etymology.



There are in Japanese no relative pronouns and no temporal

conjunctions; conjunctions, that is, for connecting consecutive



events. The want of these words precludes the admission of

afterthoughts. Postscripts in speech are impossible. The functions



of relatives are performed by position, explanatory or continuative

clauses being made to precede directly the word they affect.



Ludicrous anachronisms, not unlike those experienced by Alice in her

looking-glass journey, are occasioned by this practice. For example,



"The merry monarch who ended by falling a victim to profound

melancholia" becomes "To profound melancholia a victim by falling



ended merry monarch," and the sympathetichearer weeps first and

laughs afterward, when chronologically he should be doing precisely



the opposite.

A like inversion of the natural order of things results from the






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