Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

“This was readily understood by the deaf-mutes. Deaf-mute sign of milking a cow and drinking the milk was fully and quickly understood.

“The narrative of a boy going to an apple tree, hunting for ripe fruit, and filling his pockets, being surprised by the owner and hit upon the head with a stone, was much appreciated by the Indians and completely understood.”

Innumerable other instances of the same kind might be given;[73] but I have now said enough to establish the only points with which I am here concerned—namely, that gesture-language admits of being developed to a degree which renders it a fair substitute for spoken language, where the ideas to be conveyed are not highly abstract; and that it admits of being so developed without departing further from a direct or natural expression of ideation (as distinguished from a conventional or artificial) than allows it to be readily understood by the sign-talkers, without any preconcerted agreement as to the meanings to be attached to the particular signs employed.

Such being the case, it is of importance next to note that, as all the existing races of mankind are a word-speaking race, we are not now able to eliminate this factor, and to say how far the sign-making faculty, as exhibited in the gesture-language of man, is indebted to the elaborating influence produced by the constant and parallel employment of spoken language. We can scarcely, however, entertain any doubt that the reflex influence of speech upon gesture must have been considerable, if not immense. Even the case of the deaf-mutes proves nothing to the contrary; for these unfortunate individuals, although not able themselves to speak, nevertheless inherit in their human brains the psychological structure which has been built up by means of speech; their sign-making faculty is as well developed as in other men, though, from a physiological accident, they are deprived of the ordinary means of displaying it. Therefore we have no evidence to show to what level of excellence the sign-making faculty of man would have attained, if the race had been destitute of the faculty of speech. I shall have to return to this consideration in the next chapter, and only mention it here to avoid an undue estimate being prematurely formed of the importance of gesture as a means of thought-formation, or distinct from that of thought-expression.

I shall now proceed to analyze in some detail the syntax of gesture-language. And here again I must depend for my facts upon the two writers who have best studied this kind of language in a properly scientific manner.

Mr. Tylor says:—“The gesture-language has no grammar, properly so called; it knows no inflections of any kind, any more than the Chinese. The same sign stands for ‘walk,’ ‘walkest,’ ‘walking,’ ‘walked,’ ‘walker.’ Adjectives and verbs are not easily distinguished by the deaf and dumb. ‘Horse, black, handsome, trot, canter,’ would be the rough translation of the signs by which a deaf-mute would state that a black handsome horse trots and canters. Indeed, our elaborate system of parts of speech is but little applicable to the gesture-language, though, as will be more fully said in another chapter, it may perhaps be possible to trace in spoken language a Dualism, in some measure resembling that of the Gesture-language, with its two constituent parts, the bringing forward objects and actions in actual fact, and the mere suggestion of them by imitation.... It has, however, a syntax which is worthy of careful examination. The syntax of speaking man differs according to the language he may learn, ‘equus niger,’ ‘a black horse;’ ‘hominem amo,’ ‘j’aime l’homme.’ But the deaf-mute strings together the signs of the various ideas he wishes to connect, in what appears to be the natural order in which they follow one another in his mind, for it is the same among the mutes in different countries, and is wholly independent of the syntax which may happen to belong to the language of their speaking friends. For instance, their usual construction is not ‘Black horse,’ but ‘Horse black;’ not ‘Bring a black hat,’ but ‘Hat black bring;’ not ‘I am hungry, give me bread,’ but ‘Hungry me, bread give.’...

“The fundamental principle which regulates the order of the deaf-mutes’ signs, seems to be that enunciated by Schmalz: that which seems to him the most important he always acts before the rest, and that which seems to him superfluous he leaves out. For instance, to say, ‘My father gave me an apple,’ he makes the sign for ‘apple,’ then that for ‘father,’ and then that for ‘I,’ without adding that for ‘give.’ The following remarks, sent to me by Dr. Scott, seem to agree with this view: With regard to the two sentences you give (I struck Tom with a stick—Tom struck me with a stick), the sequence in the introduction of the particular parts would in some measure depend on the part that most attention was wished to be drawn towards. If a mere telling of the fact was required, my opinion is that it would be arranged so, ‘I-Tom-struck-a-stick,’ and the passive form in a similar manner with the change of ‘Tom’ first.

“Both these sentences are not generally said by the deaf-and-dumb without their having been interested in the fact, and then, in coming to tell of them, they first give that part they are most anxious to impress on their hearer. Thus, if a boy had struck another boy, and the injured party came to tell us, if he was desirous to acquaint us with the idea that a particular boy did it, he would point to the boy first. But if he was anxious to draw attention to his own suffering, rather than to the person by whom it was caused, he would point to himself and make the act of striking, and then point to the boy; or if he was wishful to draw attention to the cause of his suffering, he might sign the striking first, and then tell us afterwards by whom it was done.

“Dr. Scott is, so far as I know, the only person who has attempted to lay down a set of distinct rules for the syntax of the gesture-language. ‘The subject comes before the attribute, the object before the action.’ A third construction is common, though not necessary, ‘the modifier after the modified.’ The first construction, by which the ‘horse’ is put before the ‘black,’ enables the deaf-mute to make his syntax supply, to some extent, the distinction between adjectives and substantives, which his imitative signs do not themselves express.

“The other two are well exemplified by a remark of the Abbé Sicard’s: A pupil to whom I one day put this question, ‘Who made God?’ and who replied, ‘God made nothing,’ left me in no doubt as to this kind of inversion, usual to the deaf-and-dumb, when I went on to ask him, ‘Who made the shoe?’ and he answered, ‘The shoe made the shoemaker.’ So when Laura Bridgman, who was blind as well as deaf-and-dumb, had learnt to communicate ideas by spelling words on her fingers, she would say, ‘Shut door,’ ‘Give book;’ no doubt because she had learnt these sentences whole, but when she made sentences for herself, she would go back to the natural deaf-and-dumb syntax, and spell out ‘Laura bread give,’ to ask for bread to be given her, and ‘Water drink Laura,’ to express that she wanted to drink water....