Part 9 (1/2)

The sign for _steal, theft_, see Fig 75, page 293, is but slightly different froe 413, especially when the latter is made with one hand only The distinction, however, is that the grasping in the latter sign is not followed by the idea of concealht hand, after the ht toward and sometimes under the left arue, page 486, e 521, and with _prisoner_ In these the difference consists in that _cold_ and _winter_ are represented by crossing the ar the ar the fiststhe crossed wrists a foot in front of the breast

_Melon, squash,the hand arched, fingers separated and pointing forward, and pushi+ng the hand forward over a slight curve near the ground, and the generic sign for _aniht intended to represent the object

The sign for _where?_, and _to search, to seek for_,the back of the hand upward, index pointing forward, and carrying it fro it several ti at different objects That for _sos or persons, made by the Kaiowa, Coesture being made less rapidly

RESULTS SOUGHT IN THE STUDY OF SIGN LANGUAGE

These may be divided into (1) its practical application, (2) its aid to philologic researches in general with (3) particular reference to the graic relations

_PRACTICAL APPLICATION_

The e will for its practical utility depend, to a large extent, upon the correctness of the view submitted by the present writer that it is not a mere semaphoric repetition of motions to be memorized from a limited traditional list, but is a cultivated art, founded upon principles which can be readily applied by travelers and officials, so as to give them much independence of professional interpreters--as a class dangerously deceitful and tricky This advantage is not merely theoretical, but has been demonstrated to be practical by a professor in a deafseveral of the wild tribes of the plains,a word of any of their languages; nor would it only be experienced in connection with Aes in Africa and Asia, though it is not pretended to fulfill by this agency the schoolmen's dream of an ecumenical mode of communication between all peoples in spite of their dialectic divisions

It ns for intercourse with the Aress in the acquisition of English or of Spanish being so rapid that those languages are becons are proportionally disused Nor is a syste with foreigners, whose speech is not understood, as ree to cease all atte as words are used at all, signs will be made only as their acco instance in which savages showed their preference to signs instead of even an onomatope may be quoted frohboring Islands during Six Years' Exploration_, in _Proc Roy Geog Soc_, vol

iii, No 2 (new monthly series), February, 1881, p 89, 90: ”On one occasion, wishi+ng to purchase a pig, and not knowing very well how to set about it, being ignorant of the dialect, which is totally different from that of the natives in the north, I asked Mr Bro I shouldthe?' whereupon I began to grunt ical So their spears in readiness to throw; others ran away, covering their eyes with their hands, and all exhibited the utmost astonishment and alarm In fact, it was so evident that they expected , and their alarm was so irresistibly co, on which they gradually became more reassured, and those that had run away ca us so heartily aan to laugh too; but when I drew a pig on the sand with a piece of stick, and , it suddenly seemed to strike the, nodding their heads, and several of the that was required”

POWERS OF SIGNS COMPARED WITH SPEECH

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 perhts on the ently to any other person The direct or substantial natural analogy peculiar to it prevents a confusion of ideas It is to so them which yet may be understood by those addressed, but it is hardly possible to use signs without full comprehension of the theether being caught, but signs are more intimately connected

Even those most appropriate will not be understood if the subject is beyond the coible as the wild clicks of his instrurapher, or as the senalist In oral speech even onomatopes are arbitrary, thethe ear of different individuals and nations in a iven by SAYCE are in point Exactly the same sound was intended to be reproduced in the ”_bilbit_ alut_ y, and the ”_puls_” of Varro The Persian ”_bulbul_,” the ”_jugjug_” of Gascoigne, and the ”_hit_” of others are all attens y and establish, a _consensus_ between the talkers far beyond that produced by the ree of their pantoraphic and dramatic effect applied to narrative and to rhetorical exhibition, and beyond any other ive the force of reality Speech, when highly cultivated, is better adapted to generalization and abstraction; therefore to logic and metaphysics

The latter hts Sons 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 ht in resources and distinctiveness have exceeded many forht in asserting that ers, with facial and bodily accentuation, express any idea that could be conveyed by words

The cons are infinite

It has been before argued that a high degree of culture ht 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 soe has been chiefly used during historic ti around a more valuable structure to be thrown aside when the latter was completed, or as an occasional substitute, such developns 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 Muller to have been derived and deduced, that is, abstracted, frons the countenance and manner as well as the tenor decide whether objects themselves are intended, or the forms, positions, qualities, and ns for ies, are co deaf-ible and invisible are only learned through percepts of tangible and visible objects, whether finally expressed to the eye or to the ear, in tere 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 ele to which the less natural signs adopted dialectically or for expedition can always, with, so itself is a peculiar advantage, for spoken languages, unless explained by gestures or indications, can only be interpreted by hly cultivated, its rapidity on familiar subjects exceeds that of speech and approaches to that of thought itself This state to those who only notice that a selected spoken wordfor which the er time, but it must be considered that oral speech is noholly conventional, and that with the sie conventional expressions with hands and body could be ans could be worked at once Without such supposed develop Indians using signs is perhaps as rapid as between the ignorant class of speakers upon the sans would win at a trial of speed At the sareat 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 ee at a distance which the eye can reach, but not the ear, and still arno recoht not to be disturbed, and curiously enough ”Disappearing Mist,” the Iroquois chief, speaks of the forns in his tribe by women and boys as a ood 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 a the hts

An instance of the additional power gained to a speaker of ordinary language by the use of signs, i to two ans 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 blindaddressed by the voice and the forns

_RELATIONS TO PHILOLOGY_

The aid to be derived fro researches into the science of language was pointed out by LEIBNITZ, in his _Collectanea Etyh or scientific work in that direction, the obstacle to it probably being that scholars coesture speech of man to be used in comparison

The latter will, it is hoped, be supplied by the work now undertaken