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What is peculiar in China is the preservation of the ideographic system throughout thousands of years of advanced civilization a preservation probably due, at least in part, to the fact that the spoken language is monosyllabic, uninflected and full of homonyms. Chi Li, in an article on "Some Anthropological Problems of China."
Phlegmatic and matter-of-fact by nature, exact and careful in practical matters, and to a high degree imitative and industrious, the Chinese are singularly devoid of imagination and indisposed to philosophy. Their monosyllabic and uninflected language, belonging to one of the earliest strata of human speech, and ill fitted to express abstract or poetical ideas, is an index to their whole nature.
Is the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only language he has those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with the hot sun shining on their glossy coats.
The dead man flowed together and was whole. He stood up woodenly, with his face frozen. "Who calls?" he asked in an uninflected, hollow voice. "Why am I called? I have no soul." "We call," Bork answered. "Tell us what you saw at the hole in the sky." A scream tore from the throat of the thing, and its hands came up to its eyes, tearing at them. Its mouth worked soundlessly, and breath sucked in.
The old woman sat by the stove, her shifting glance wandering from one to another; she was like a crafty bird of prey sitting in a cage. Then her voice began, passionless and uninflected: "You're a great donkey; now it's the fourth evening you've made pancakes for your vagabond; you're always at him, kissing and petting him!
Experienced in fake mediums, she believed Willy Hanlon's assertion that this man was one of the few genuine mystics, but she proposed to judge for herself. At last Marigny spoke. His voice was low, his tones monotonous and uninflected. "Aunt Abby Aunt Westminster Abbey" the words came slowly. Miss Ames gave a startled jump. Her face blanched and she trembled as she clutched Fibsy's arm.
"Nine o'clock, M'shi Grande," said Absalom in the uninflected voice of a good servant who states a fact unqualified by personal opinion. Grandemont rose to his feet. In their time all the Charleses had been proven, and they were gallant losers. "Serve dinner," he said calmly.
Everyone who has given any attention to this question must be aware that the intellectual gesture is entirely different in highly inflected languages such as Greek and Latin and in so uninflected a language as English, that learning Greek to improve one's English style is like learning to swim in order to fence better, and that familiarity with Greek seems only too often to render a man incapable of clear, strong expression in English at all.
The dead grass and the dead leaves made a sere, yellow world. It looked like a land of unending summer, but a breath of chill came out of the hollows with the sunset. The girl would have gone on, oblivious. But my father went down into the road and took her by the arm. She stopped when she saw who it was, and spoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a person in extremity.
The old woman sat by the stove, her shifting glance wandering from one to another; she was like a crafty bird of prey sitting in a cage. Then her voice began, passionless and uninflected: "You're a great donkey; now it's the fourth evening you've made pancakes for your vagabond; you're always at him, kissing and petting him!
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