“A look of inquiry converts an assertion into a question, and fully seems to make the difference between ‘The master is come,’ and ‘Is the master come?’ The interrogative pronouns ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ are made by looking or pointing about in an inquiring manner; in fact, by a number of unsuccessful attempts to say, ‘he,’ ‘that.’ The deaf-and-dumb child’s way of asking, ‘Who has beaten you?’ would be, ‘You beaten; who was it?’ Though it is possible to render a great mass of simple statements and questions, almost gesture for word, the concretism of thought which belongs to the deaf-mute, whose mind has not been much developed by the use of written language, and even to the educated one when he is thinking and uttering his thoughts in his native signs, commonly requires more complex phrases to be recast. A question so common amongst us as, ‘What is the matter with you?’ would be put, ‘You crying? You have been beaten?’ and so on. The deaf-and-dumb child does not ask, ‘What did you have for dinner yesterday?’ but ‘Did you have soup?’ ‘Did you have porridge?’ and so forth. A conjunctive sentence he expresses by an alternative or contrast; ‘I should be punished if I were lazy and naughty,’ would be put, ‘I lazy, naughty, no!—lazy, naughty, I punished, yes!’ Obligation may be expressed in a similar way; ‘I must love and honour my teacher,’ may be put, ‘Teacher, I beat, deceive, scold, no!—I love, honour, yes!’ As Steinthal says in his admirable essay, it is only the certainty which speech gives to a man’s mind in holding fast ideas in all their relations, which brings him to the shorter course of expressing only the positive side of the idea, and dropping the negative....
“To ‘make’ is too abstract an idea for the deaf-mute; to show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the carpenter makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the coat, and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a proposition as ‘Rain makes the land fruitful,’ would not come into his way of thinking: ‘rain fall, plants grow,’ would be his pictorial expression.... The order of the signs by which the Lord’s Prayer is rendered is much as follows:—‘Father our, heaven in—name Thy hallowed—kingdom Thy come—will Thy done—earth on, heaven in, as. Bread give us daily—trespasses our forgive us, them trespass against us, forgive as. Temptation lead not—but evil deliver from—Kingdom power glory thine for ever.’”[74]
I shall now add some quotations from Colonel Mallery on the same subject.
“The reader will understand without explanation that there is in sign-language no organized sentence such as is in the language 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. Sign-language cannot show by inflection the reciprocal dependence of words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal intonations 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, 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.”[75]
The following is the order in which the parable of the Prodigal Son would be translated by a cultivated sign-talker, with Colonel Mallery’s remarks thereon:—
“‘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, 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.... Degrees of comparison are frequently expressed, both by deaf-mutes and by Indians, by adding to the generic or descriptive sign that for ‘big’ or ‘little.’ Damp would be ‘wet—little’; cool, ‘cold—little’; hot, ‘warm—much.’ The amount or force of motion also often indicates corresponding diminution or augmentation, but sometimes expresses a different shade of meaning, as is reported by Dr. Matthews with reference to the sign for bad and contempt. This change in degree of motion is, however, often used for emphasis only, as is the raising of the voice in speech or italicizing and capitalizing in print. The Prince of Wied gives an instance of a comparison in his sign for excessively hard, first giving that for hard, viz.: Open the left hand, and strike against it several times with the right (with the backs of the fingers). Afterwards he gives hard, excessively, as follows: Sign for hard, then place the left index finger upon the right shoulder, at the same time extend and raise the right arm high, extending the index finger upward, perpendicularly.”
I have entered thus at some length into the syntax of gesture-language because this language is, as I have before remarked, the most natural or immediate mode of giving expression to the logic of recepts; it is the least symbolic or conventional phase of the sign-making faculty, and therefore a study of its method is of importance in such a general survey of this faculty as we are endeavouring to take. The points in the above analysis to which I would draw attention as the most important are, the absence of the copula and of many other “parts of speech,” the order in which ideas are expressed, the pictorial devices by which the ideas are presented in as concrete a form as possible, and the fact that no ideas of any high abstraction are ever expressed at all.[76]