Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2.t3.3

c8.s2.t3.3

of its characters, but in their basic structure as it is still ideographic, though very much conventionalised. There is no systematic correspondence between the written characters and the sounds they represent. "The Chinese written language has no alphabet, for it has no spelling. It likewise has no visible parts of speech. The same character without change of form may be used as a noun, verb or adjective; all grammatical relations being indicated by position in the sentence. It is a language of roots and has no grammatical terminations to denote number, case, tense, person or other grammatical modifications. There are no inflections, the language being devoid of conjugation, declension and every form of grammatical construction. There are devices employed for indicating parts of speech, but they do not affect the drawing of the characters, which are made up of an old assortment of ideograms, phonograms and arbitrary symbols, often combined in the most illogical and whimsical manner."¹¹⁸