The reader will understand without explanation that there is in the
gesture speech no organized sentence such as is integrated in the
languages of civilization, and that he must not look for articles or
particles or passive voice or case or grammatic gender, or even what
appears in those languages as a substantive or a verb, as a subject
or a predicate, or as qualifiers or inflexions. The sign radicals,
without being specifically any of our parts of speech, may be all
of them in turn. There is, however, a grouping and sequence of the
ideographic pictures, an arrangement of signs in connected succession,
which may be classed under the scholastic head of syntax. This
subject, with special reference to the order of deaf-mute signs as
compared with oral speech, has been the theme of much discussion, some
notes of which, condensed from the speculations of M. Remi Valade and
others, follow in the next paragraph without further comment than may
invite attention to the profound remark of LEIBNITZ.
In mimic construction there are to be considered both the order in
which the signs succeed one another and the relative positions in
which they are made, the latter remaining longer in the memory than
the former, and spoken language may sometimes in its early infancy
have reproduced the ideas of a sign picture without commencing from
the same point. So the order, as in Greek and Latin, is very variable.
In nations among whom the alphabet was introduced without the
intermediary to any impressive degree of picture-writing, the order
being (1) language of signs, almost superseded by (2) spoken language,
and (3) alphabetic writing, men would write in the order in which they
had been accustomed to speak. But if at a time when spoken language
was still rudimentary, intercourse being mainly carried on by signs,
figurative writing had been invented, the order of the figures would
be the order of the signs, and the same order would pass into the
spoken language. Hence LEIBNITZ says truly that "the writing of the
Chinese might seem to have been invented by a deaf person." The
oral language has not known the phases which have given to the
Indo-European tongues their formation and grammatical parts. In the
latter, signs were conquered by speech, while in the former, speech
received the yoke.
Sign language cannot show by inflection the reciprocal dependence
of words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal
intonation are only used rhetorically or for degrees of comparison.
The relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by
placement, and their connection is established when necessary by the
abstraction of ideas. The sign talker is an artist, grouping persons
and things so as to show the relations between them, and the effect
is that which is seen in a picture. But though the artist has the
advantage in presenting in a permanent connected scene the result of
several transient signs, he can only present it as it appears at
a single moment. The sign talker has the succession of time at his
disposal, and his scenes move and act, are localized and animated, and
their arrangement is therefore more varied and significant.
It is not satisfactory to give the order of equivalent words
as representative of the order of signs, because the pictorial
arrangement is wholly lost; but adopting this expedient as a
mere illustration of the sequence in the presentation of signs by
deaf-mutes, the following is quoted from an essay by Rev. J.R. Keep,
in _American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb_, vol. xvi, p. 223, as the
order in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is translated into
signs:
"Once, man one, sons two. Son younger say, Father property your
divide: part my, me give. Father so.--Son each, part his give. Days
few after, son younger money all take, country far go, money
spend, wine drink, food nice eat. Money by and by gone all. Country
everywhere food little: son hungry very. Go seek man any, me hire.
Gentleman meet. Gentleman son send field swine feed. Son swine husks
eat, see--self husks eat want--cannot--husks him give nobody. Son
thinks, say, father my, servants many, bread enough, part give away
can--I none--starve, die. I decide: Father I go to, say I bad, God
disobey, you disobey--name my hereafter _son_, no--I unworthy. You
me work give servant like. So son begin go. Father far look: son see,
pity, run, meet, embrace. Son father say, I bad, you disobey, God
disobey--name my hereafter _son_, no--I unworthy. But father servants
call, command robe best bring, son put on, ring finger put on, shoes
feet put on, calf fat bring, kill. We all eat, merry. Why? Son this my
formerly dead, now alive: formerly lost, now found: rejoice."
It may be remarked, not only from this example, but from general
study, that the verb "to be" as a copula or predicant does not have
any place in sign language. It is shown, however, among deaf-mutes as
an assertion of presence or existence by a sign of stretching the arms
and hands forward and then adding the sign of affirmation. _Time_ as
referred to in the conjunctions _when_ and _then_ is not gestured.
Instead of the form, "When I have had a sleep I will go to the river,"
or "After sleeping I will go to the river," both deaf-mutes and
Indians would express the intention by "Sleep done, I river go."
Though time present, past, and future is readily expressed in signs
(see page 366), it is done once for all in the connection to which
it belongs, and once established is not repeated by any subsequent
intimation, as is commonly the case in oral speech. Inversion, by
which the object is placed before the action, is a striking feature
of the language of deaf-mutes, and it appears to follow the natural
method by which objects and actions enter into the mental conception.
In striking a rock the natural conception is not first of the abstract
idea of striking or of sending a stroke into vacancy, seeing nothing
and having no intention of striking anything in particular, when
suddenly a rock rises up to the mental vision and receives the blow;
the order is that the man sees the rock, has the intention to strike
it, and does so; therefore he gestures, "I rock strike." For further
illustration of this subject, a deaf-mute boy, giving in signs
the compound action of a man shooting a bird from a tree, first
represented the tree, then the bird as alighting upon it, then a
hunter coming toward and looking at it, taking aim with a gun, then
the report of the latter and the falling and the dying gasps of the
bird. These are undoubtedly the successive steps that an artist would
have taken in drawing the picture, or rather successive pictures, to
illustrate the story. It is, however, urged that this pictorial order
natural to deaf-mutes is not natural to the congenitally blind who are
not deaf-mute, among whom it is found to be rhythmical. It is asserted
that blind persons not carefully educated usually converse in a
metrical cadence, the action usually coming first in the structure of
the sentence. The deduction is that all the senses when intact enter
into the mode of intellectual conception in proportion to their
relative sensitiveness and intensity, and hence no one mode of
ideation can be insisted on as normal to the exclusion of others.
Whether or not the above statement concerning the blind is true, the
conceptions and presentations of deaf-mutes and of Indians using sign
language because they cannot communicate by speech, are confined to
optic and, therefore, to pictorial arrangement.
The abbe Sicard, dissatisfied with the want of tenses and
conjunctions, indeed of most of the modern parts of speech, in the
natural signs, and with their inverted order, attempted to construct a
new language of signs, in which the words should be given in the
order of the French or other spoken language adopted, which of course
required him to supply a sign for every word of spoken language.
Signs, whatever their character, could not become associated with
words, or suggest them, until words had been learned. The first step,
therefore, was to explain by means of natural signs, as distinct from
the new signs styled methodical, the meaning of a passage of verbal
language. Then each word was taken separately and a sign affixed to
it, which was to be learned by the pupil. If the word represented a
physical object, the sign would be the same as the natural sign, and
would be already understood, provided the object had been seen and was
familiar; and in all cases the endeavor was to have the sign convey
as strong a suggestion of the meaning of the word as was possible. The
final step was to gesticulate these signs, thus associated with words,
in the exact order in which the words were to stand in a sentence.
Then the pupil would write the very words desired in the exact order
desired. If the previous explanation in natural signs had not been
sufficiently full and careful, he would not understand the passage.
The methodical signs did not profess to give him the ideas, except
in a very limited degree, but only to show him how to express ideas
according to the order and methods of spoken language. As there were
no repetitions of time in narratives in the sign language, it became
necessary to unite with the word-sign for verbs others, to indicate
the different tenses of the verbs, and so by degrees the methodical
signs not only were required to comprise signs for every word, but
also, with every such sign, a grammatical sign to indicate what part
of speech the word was, and, in the case of verbs, still other signs
to show their tenses and corresponding inflections. It was, as Dr.
Peet remarks, a cumbrous and unwieldly vehicle, ready at every step to
break down under the weight of its own machinery. Nevertheless, it was
industriously taught in all our schools from the date of the founding
of the American Asylum in 1817 down to about the year 1835, when it
was abandoned.
The collection of narratives, speeches, and dialogues of our Indians
in sign language, first systematically commenced by the present
writer, several examples of which are in this paper, has not yet
been sufficiently complete and exact to establish conclusions on the
subject of the syntactic arrangement of their signs. So far as
studied it seems to be similar to that of deaf-mutes and to retain the
characteristic of pantomimes in figuring first the principal idea and
adding the accessories successively in the order of importance, the
ideographic expressions being in the ideologic order. If the examples
given are not enough to establish general rules of construction, they
at least show the natural order of ideas in the minds of the gesturers
and the several modes of inversion by which they pass from the known
to the unknown, beginning with the dominant idea or that supposed
to be best known. Some special instances of expedients other than
strictly syntactic coming under the machinery broadly designated as
grammar may be mentioned.