Sign language, being the mother utterance of nature, poetically styled
by Lamartine the visible attitudes of the soul, is superior to all
others in that it permits every one to find in nature an image to
express his thoughts on the most needful matters intelligently to any
other person. The direct or substantial natural analogy peculiar to
it prevents a confusion of ideas. It is to some extent possible to
use words without understanding them which yet may be understood by
those addressed, but it is hardly possible to use signs without full
comprehension of them. Separate words may also be comprehended by
persons hearing them without the whole connected sense of the words
taken together being caught, but signs are more intimately connected.
Even those most appropriate will not be understood if the subject
is beyond the comprehension of their beholders. They would be as
unintelligible as the wild clicks of his instrument, in an electric
storm, would be to the telegrapher, or as the semaphore, driven by
wind, to the signalist. In oral speech even onomatopes are arbitrary,
the most strictly natural sounds striking the ear of different
individuals and nations in a manner wholly diverse. The instances
given by SAYCE are in point. Exactly the same sound was intended to
be reproduced in the "_bilbit_ amphora" of Naevius, the "_glut glut_
murmurat unda sonans" of the Latin Anthology, and the "_puls_" of
Varro. The Persian "_bulbul_," the "_jugjug_" of Gascoigne, and the
"_whitwhit_" of others are all attempts at imitating the note of the
nightingale. Successful signs must have a much closer analogy and
establish, a _consensus_ between the talkers far beyond that produced
by the mere sound of words.
Gestures, in the degree of their pantomimic character, excel in
graphic and dramatic effect applied to narrative and to rhetorical
exhibition, and beyond any other mode of description give the force
of reality. Speech, when highly cultivated, is better adapted to
generalization and abstraction; therefore to logic and metaphysics.
The latter must ever henceforth, be the superior in formulating
thoughts. Some of the enthusiasts in signs have contended that this
unfavorable distinction is not from any inherent incapability, but
because their employment has not been continued unto perfection,
and that if they had been elaborated by the secular labor devoted
to spoken language they might in resources and distinctiveness have
exceeded many forms of the latter. Gallaudet, Peet, and others maybe
right in asserting that man could by his arms, hands, and fingers,
with facial and bodily accentuation, express any idea that could be
conveyed by words.
The combinations which can be made with corporeal signs are infinite.
It has been before argued that a high degree of culture might have
been attained by man without articulate speech and it is but a further
step in the reasoning to conclude that if articulate speech had not
been possessed or acquired, necessity would have developed gesture
language to a degree far beyond any known exhibition of it. The
continually advancing civilization and continually increasing
intercourse of countless ages has perfected oral speech, and as both,
civilization and intercourse were possible with signs alone it is
to be supposed that they would have advanced in some corresponding
manner. But as sign language has been chiefly used during historic
time either as a scaffolding around a more valuable structure to
be thrown aside when the latter was completed, or as an occasional
substitute, such development was not to be expected.
The process of forming signs to express abstract ideas is only a
variant from that of oral speech, in which the words for the most
abstract ideas, such as law, virtue, infinitude, and immortality,
are shown by Max Mueller to have been derived and deduced, that
is, abstracted, from sensuous impressions. In the use of signs the
countenance and manner as well as the tenor decide whether objects
themselves are intended, or the forms, positions, qualities, and
motions of other objects which are suggested, and signs for moral
and intellectual ideas, founded on analogies, are common all over
the world as well as among deaf-mutes. Concepts of the intangible and
invisible are only learned through percepts of tangible and visible
objects, whether finally expressed to the eye or to the ear, in terms
of sight or of sound.
Sign language is so faithful to nature, and so essentially living in
its expression, that it is not probable that it will ever die. It may
become disused, but will revert. Its elements are ever natural and
universal, by recurring to which the less natural signs adopted
dialectically or for expedition can always, with, some circumlocution,
be explained. This power of interpreting itself is a peculiar
advantage, for spoken languages, unless explained by gestures or
indications, can only be interpreted by means of some other spoken
language. When highly cultivated, its rapidity on familiar subjects
exceeds that of speech and approaches to that of thought itself. This
statement may be startling to those who only notice that a selected
spoken word may convey in an instant a meaning for which the motions
of even an expert in signs may require a much longer time, but it must
be considered that oral speech is now wholly conventional, and that
with the similar development of sign language conventional expressions
with hands and body could be made more quickly than with the vocal
organs, because more organs could be worked at once. Without such
supposed development the habitual communication between deaf-mutes and
among Indians using signs is perhaps as rapid as between the ignorant
class of speakers upon the same subjects, and in many instances the
signs would win at a trial of speed. At the same time it must be
admitted that great increase in rapidity is chiefly obtained by the
system of preconcerted abbreviations, before explained, and by the
adoption of arbitrary forms, in which naturalness is sacrificed and
conventionality established, as has been the case with all spoken
languages in the degree in which they have become copious and
convenient.
There is another characteristic of the gesture speech that, though
it cannot be resorted to in the dark, nor where the attention of
the person addressed has not been otherwise attracted, it has the
countervailing benefit of use when the voice could not be employed.
This may be an advantage at a distance which the eye can reach, but
not the ear, and still more frequently when silence or secrecy is
desired. Dalgarno recommends it for use in the presence of great
people, who ought not to be disturbed, and curiously enough
"Disappearing Mist," the Iroquois chief, speaks of the former
extensive use of signs in his tribe by women and boys as a mark of
respect to warriors and elders, their voices, in the good old days,
not being uplifted in the presence of the latter. The decay of that
wholesome state of discipline, he thinks, accounts partly for the
disappearance of the use of signs among the modern impudent youth and
the dusky claimants of woman's rights.
An instance of the additional power gained to a speaker of ordinary
language by the use of signs, impressed the writer while dictating to
two amanuenses at the same moment, to the one by signs and the other
by words, on different subjects, a practice which would have enabled
Caesar to surpass his celebrated feat. It would also be easy to talk to
a deaf and blind man at once, the latter being addressed by the voice
and the former in signs.
_RELATIONS TO PHILOLOGY._
The aid to be derived from the study of sign language in prosecuting
researches into the science of language was pointed out by LEIBNITZ,
in his _Collectanea Etymologica_, without hitherto exciting any
thorough or scientific work in that direction, the obstacle to it
probably being that scholars competent in other respects had no
adequate data of the gesture speech of man to be used in comparison.
The latter will, it is hoped, be supplied by the work now undertaken.
In the first part of this paper it was suggested that signs played an
important part in giving meaning to spoken words. Philology, comparing
the languages of earth in their radicals, must therefore include the
graphic or manual presentation of thought, and compare the elements of
ideography with those of phonics. Etymology now examines the ultimate
roots, not the fanciful resemblances between oral forms, in the
different tongues; the internal, not the mere external parts of
language. A marked peculiarity of sign language consists in its
limited number of radicals and the infinite combinations into
which those radicals enter while still remaining distinctive. It is
therefore a proper field for etymologic study.
From these and other considerations it is supposed that an analysis
of the original conceptions of gestures, studied together with the
holophrastic roots in the speech of the gesturers, may aid in the
ascertainment of some relation between concrete ideas and words.
Meaning does not adhere to the phonic presentation of thought, while
it does to signs. The latter are doubtless more flexible and in that
sense more mutable than words, but the ideas attached to them are
persistent, and therefore there is not much greater metamorphosis
in the signs than in the cognitions. The further a language has been
developed from its primordial roots, which have been twisted into
forms no longer suggesting any reason for their original selection,
and the more the primitive significance of its words has disappeared,
the fewer points of contact can it retain with signs. The higher
languages are more precise because the consciousness of the derivation
of most of their words is lost, so that they have become counters,
good for any sense agreed upon and for no other.
It is, however, possible to ascertain the included gesture even in
many English words. The class represented by the word _supercilious_
will occur to all readers, but one or two examples may be given not
so obvious and more immediately connected with the gestures of our
Indians. _Imbecile_, generally applied to the weakness of old age,
is derived from the Latin _in_, in the sense of on, and _bacillum_,
a staff, which at once recalls the Cheyenne sign for _old man_,
mentioned above, page 339. So _time_ appears more nearly connected
with [Greek: teino] to stretch, when information is given of the sign
for _long time_, in the Speech of Kin Ch[=e]-[)e]ss, in this paper,
viz., placing the thumbs and forefingers in such a position as if a
small thread was held between the thumb and forefinger of each hand,
the hands first touching each other, and then moving slowly from each
other, as if _stretching_ a piece of gum-elastic.
In the languages of North America, which have not become arbitrary to
the degree exhibited by those of civilized man, the connection between
the idea and the word is only less obvious than, that still unbroken
between the idea and the sign, and they remain strongly affected
by the concepts of outline, form, place, position, and feature on
which gesture is founded, while they are similar in their fertile
combination of radicals.
Indian language consists of a series of words that are but slightly
differentiated parts of speech following each other in the order
suggested in the mind of the speaker without absolute laws of
arrangement, as its sentences are not completely integrated. The
sentence necessitates parts of speech, and parts of speech are
possible only when a language has reached that stage where sentences
are logically constructed. The words of an Indian tongue, being
synthetic or undifferentiated parts of speech, are in this respect
strictly analogous to the gesture elements which enter into a sign
language. The study of the latter is therefore valuable for comparison
with the words of the former. The one language throws much light upon
the other, and neither can be studied to the best advantage without a
knowledge of the other.
Some special resemblances between the language of signs and the
character of the oral languages found on this continent may be
mentioned. Dr. J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL remarks of the composition of their
words that they were "so constructed as to be thoroughly self-defining
and immediately intelligible to the hearer." In another connection the
remark is further enforced: "Indeed, it is a requirement of the Indian
languages that every word shall be so framed as to admit of immediate
resolution to its significant elements by the hearer. It must be
thoroughly _self-defining_, for (as Max Mueller has expressed it) 'it
requires tradition, society, and literature to maintain words which
can no longer be analyzed at once.'... In the ever-shifting state of
a nomadic society no debased coin can be tolerated in language, no
obscure legend accepted on trust. The metal must be pure and the
legend distinct."
Indian languages, like those of higher development, sometimes
exhibit changes of form by the permutation of vowels, but often an
incorporated particle, whether suffix, affix, or infix, shows the
etymology which often, also, exhibits the same objective conception
that would be executed in gesture. There are, for instance, different
forms for standing, sitting, lying, falling, &c., and for standing,
sitting, lying on or falling from the same level or a higher or lower
level. This resembles the pictorial conception and execution of signs.
Major J.W. POWELL, with particular reference to the disadvantages of
the multiplied inflections in Indian languages, alike with the Greek
and Latin, when the speaker is compelled, in the choice of a word to
express his idea, to think of a great multiplicity of things, gives
the following instance:
"A Ponca Indian in saying that a man killed a rabbit, would have to
say: the man, he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case,
purposely killed, by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one,
animate, sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to
kill would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by
inflection and incorporated particles to denote person, number, and
gender as animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or
lying, and case; and the form of the verb would also express whether
the killing was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by
shooting or by some other process, and, if by shooting, whether by
bow and arrow, or with a gun; and the form of the verb would in like
manner have to express all of these things relating to the object;
that is, the person, number, gender, and case of the object; and
from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms of the verb to kill, this
particular one would have to be selected." This is substantially the
mode in which an Indian sign talker would find it necessary to tell
the story, as is shown by several examples given below in narratives,
speeches, and dialogues.
Indian languages exhibit the same fondness for demonstration which is
necessary in sign language. The two forms of utterance are alike in
their want of power to express certain words, such as the verb "to
be," and in the criterion of organization, so far as concerns a
high degree of synthesis and imperfect differentiation, they bear
substantially the same relation to the English language.
It may finally be added that as not only proper names but nouns,
generally in Indian languages are connotive, predicating some
attribute of the object, they can readily be expressed by gesture
signs, and therefore among them, if anywhere, it is to be expected
that relations may be established between the words and the signs.