The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1883-07-19
Gesture Language.

attempt to describe and analyze the ges-
ture language. in order to show the con-
sistency of principle with the debarred
from spoken language, whether deaf
mutes or men unacquainted with one
another's languages, contrive to utter
their own thoughts of others through
expressive gestures. In these gestures
we have direct and universal outcome
OF the human mind, system by which q
deaf and dumb scholar from an English
asylum can hold converse at first sight
with Laplanders or Iroquois or Chinese.
They understand each other because they
use signs for the most part self. expires.
sive ard conveying their own meaning
to those who never saw them before.
Now, any idea can be thus conveyed by
self-expressive signs, not in one way
rie, for example, has to express the idea
horse: this he can do by various signs.
as by the hand so held as to initiate @
horses's head, or by the act of strad-
ding pair of forked fingers across the
edge of the other hand, or by the imita-
ted motion of the galop; different Ms
these signs are, each tells its own tale.
When, however, people have been long
used to converse together in gestures,
they are apt to cut them down into alb.
breviated forms which do not show their
meaning at first sight, and might even
seem to outsiders to be artificial. Thus,
white man, seeing q Cheyenne Indian
hold his bent arm forward with the hand
closed knuckles upward, was puzzled as
to what this might mean; the Indian.
seeing his look of perplexity, took q
q stick and, bending his head and back,
completed the picture into that OF a
bent old man leaning on staff. thus
showing that the sign meant "old man"
Traditional signs may even go on after
their reason has passed away, as the sign
for ''stone" made by hammering with the
fists on the other hand, a gesture dating
from the. Stone Age, in which the In
dams lived within few generations,
when their only hammer was q stone.
These two examples are taken from the
recent careful collection of North Amer.
icsn gesture signs by Colonel Mallery,
published by the Smithsonian Institute.
The labor and expense which anthropol-
ogists in the United States are now be-
slowing on the study Of the indigenous
tribes contrasts, am sorry to say, with
the Indifference shown to such observa-
tons in Canada, where the habits Of yet
more interesting native tribes are al
lowed to die out without even Q record.
But to return to the gesture language.
This passage of self expressive signs in
to what seem arbitrary signs throws
strong light on the principles of spoken
language, where We find a few self ex.
pressive sounds. such as interjections
o,.L ~ L. "a Lii
cries, while the great majority OF words
are not even traceable back to the self.
expressive stage from which the analogy
Of gesture-language leads us to suppose
that they originally sprang. Moreover.
the sequence or collocati0n OF gesture
signs CONFORMS to fixed rules which dis
play the action Of the thinking mind.
The subject must precede the attribute;
for instance, such sequence rs Q heavy
stick" would have no sense to the sign
maker, who necessarily introduces the
stick before he can clothe it with an at
tribute. Phrases, SO to speak, out of an
American gesture-story illustrate the
gesture. syntax. When the fnger-tips of
the two hands are brought together to
show hut or wigwsm, then pointing to
ones own breast does the work of pro-
noun, "hut-mine." The sequence "buf.
falo.one- shot killed" starts with the idea
Of buffalo, adds that there was one, and
then tho sign maker. having placed the
idea Of that one buffalo before his inter-
locutor, can imitatively shoot ct it, and
it falls dead. he can even imply the idea
Of causation in the sharp following Of
the shot by the animals fall, which
makes one instantaneous consequence Of
the other.-( E. B. Taylor in Nature.