Pointing and graphic gestures thus represent the two means which gesture-language employs. Within the second of these classes of gestures, however, we may distinguish a small sub-group that may be called significant; in this case, the object is not represented by means of a direct picture, but by incidental characteristics—man, for example, is expressed by lifting the hat. The signs are all directly perceptible. The most important characteristic of gesture-language, as well as the most distinctive feature of an original language, is the fact that there is no trace of abstract concepts, there being merely perceptual representations. And yet some of these representations—and this is a proof of how insistently human thought, even in its beginnings, presses on to the formation of concepts—have acquired a symbolical meaning by virtue of which they become sensuous means, in a certain sense, of expressing concepts which in themselves are not of a perceptual nature. We may here mention only one such gesture, noteworthy because it occurs independently in the language of the European deaf and dumb and in that of the Dakota Indians. 'Truth' is represented by moving the index finger directly forward from the lips, while 'lie' is indicated by a movement towards the right or left. The former is thus held to be a straight speech and the latter a crooked speech, transcriptions which also occur, as poetical expressions, in spoken language. On the whole, however, such symbolical signs are rare if the natural gesture-language has not been artificially reconstructed; moreover, they always remain perceptual in character.
Corresponding to this feature is also another characteristic which all natural gesture-languages will be found to possess. In vain we search them for the grammatical categories either of our own or of other spoken languages—none may be found. No distinction is made between noun, adjective, or verb; none between nominative, dative, accusative, etc. Every representation retains its representative character, and that to which it refers may exemplify any of the grammatical categories known to us. For example, the gesture for walking may denote either the act of walking or the course or path; that for striking, either the verb 'to strike' or the noun 'blow.' Thus, in this respect also, gesture-language is restricted to perceptual signs expressing ideas capable of perceptual representation. The same is true, finally, of the sequence in which the ideas of the speaker are arranged, or, briefly, of the syntax of gesture-language. In various ways, depending on fixed usages of language, our syntax, as is well known, permits us to separate words that, as regards meaning, belong together, or, conversely, to bring together words that have no immediate relation. Gesture-language obeys but one law. Every single sign must be intelligible either in itself or through the one preceding it. It follows from this that if, for example, an object and one of its qualities are both to be designated, the quality must not be expressed first, since, apart from the object, it would be unmeaning; its designation, therefore, regularly occurs after that of the object to which it belongs. Whereas, for example, we say 'a good man,' gesture-language says 'man good.' Similarly, in the case of verb and object, the object generally precedes. When, however, the action expressed by the verb is thought of as more closely related to the subject, the converse order may occur and the verb may directly follow the subject. How, then, does gesture-language reproduce the sentence 'The angry teacher struck the child'? The signs for teacher and for striking have already been described; 'angry' is expressed mimetically by wrinkling the forehead; 'child' by rocking the left forearm supported by the right. Thus, the above sentence is translated into gesture-language in the following manner: First, there are the two signs for teacher, lifting the hat and raising the finger; then follows the mimetic gesture for anger, succeeded by a rocking of the arm to signify child, and, finally, by the motion of striking. If we indicate the subject of the sentence by S, the attribute by A, the object by O, and the verb by V, the sequence in our language is ASVO; in gesture-language it is SAOV, 'teacher angry child strikes,' or, in exceptional cases, SAVO. Gesture-language thus reverses the order of sequence in the two pairs of words. A construction such as 'es schlug das Kind der Lehrer (VOS), always possible in spoken language and occurring not infrequently (for example, in Latin), would be absolutely impossible in gesture-language.
If, then, gesture-language affords us certain psychological conclusions regarding the nature of a primitive language, it is of particular interest, from this point of view, to compare its characteristics with the corresponding traits of the most primitive spoken languages. As already stated, the so-called Soudan languages typify those that bear all the marks of relatively primitive thought. These languages of Central Africa obviously represent a much more primitive stage of development than do those of the Bantu peoples of the south or even those of the Hamitic peoples of the north. The language of the Hottentots is related to that of these Hamitic peoples. It is, in fact, because of this relationship, and also because of characteristics divergent from the negro type, that the Hottentots are regarded as a race that immigrated from the north and underwent changes by mixture with native peoples. If, now, we compare one of the Soudan languages, the Ewe, for example, with gesture-language, one difference will at once be apparent. The words of this relatively primitive spoken language do not possess the qualities of perceptibility and immediate intelligibility that characterize each particular gesture-sign. This is readily explicable as a result of processes of phonetic change, which are never absent, as well as of the assimilation of foreign elements and of the replacement of words by conceptual symbols that are accidental and independent of the sound. These changes occur in the history of every language. Every spoken language is the outcome of recondite processes whose beginnings are no longer traceable. And yet the Soudan languages, particularly, have preserved characteristics that show much more intimate connections between sound and meaning than our cultural languages possess. The very fact is noteworthy that certain gradations or even antitheses of thought are regularly expressed by gradations or antitheses of sound whose feeling tone plainly corresponds to the relation of the ideas. While our words 'large' and 'small,' 'here' and 'there,' show no correspondence between the character of the sound and the meaning, the case is entirely different with the equivalent expressions in the Ewe language. In this language large and small objects are designated by the same word. In the one case, however, the word is uttered in a deep tone, while in the other a high tone is used. Or, in the case of indicative signs, the deep tone signifies greater remoteness, the high tone, proximity. Indeed, in some Sudan languages three degrees of remoteness or of size are thus distinguished. 'Yonder in the distance' is expressed by a very deep tone; 'yonder in the middle distance,' by a medium tone; and 'here,' by the highest tone. Occasionally, differences of quality are similarly distinguished by differences of tone, as, for example, 'sweet' by a high tone, 'bitter' by a deep tone, 'to be acted upon' (that is, our passive) by a deep tone, and activity (or our active) by a high tone. This accounts for a phenomenon prevalent in other languages remote from those of the Soudan. In Semitic and Hamitic languages, the letter 'U,' particularly, has the force of a passive when occurring either as a suffix to the root of a word or in the middle of the word itself. For example, in the Hebrew forms of the so-called 'Pual' and 'Piel,' as well as 'Hophal' and 'Hiphil,' the first of each pair is passive, and the second, active in meaning. It was frequently supposed that this was accidental, or was due to linguistic causes of phonetic change other than the above. But when we meet the same variations of sound and meaning in other radically different languages, we must stop to ask ourselves whether this is not the result of a psychological relationship which, though generally lost in the later development of language, here still survives in occasional traces. In fact, when we recall the way in which we relate stories to children, we at once notice that precisely the same phenomenon recurs in child-language—a language, of course, first created, as a rule, by adults. This connection of sound and meaning is clearly due to the unconscious desire that the sound shall impart to the child not merely the meaning of the idea, but also its feeling-tone. In describing giants and monsters, she who relates fairy-tales to the child deepens her tone; when fairies, elves, and dwarfs appear in the narrative, she raises her voice. If sorrow and pain enter, the tone is deepened; with joyous emotions, high tones are employed. In view of these facts, we might say that this direct correlation of expression and meaning, observed in that most primitive of all languages, gesture-language, has disappeared even from the relatively primitive spoken languages; nevertheless, the latter have retained traces of it in greater abundance than have the cultural languages. In the cultural languages they recur, if at all, only in the onomatopoetic word-formations of later origin. We may recall such words as sausen (soughing), brummen (growling), knistern (crackling), etc.
The question still remains how the other characteristics of gesture-language, particularly the absence of grammatical categories and a syntax which follows the principle of immediate and perceptual intelligibility, compare with the corresponding characteristics of the relatively primitive spoken languages. These characteristics, indeed, are of incomparably greater importance than the relations of sound and meaning. The latter are more strongly exposed to external, transforming influences. Word-formations, however, and the position of the words within the sentence, mirror the forms of thought itself; whenever the thought undergoes vital changes, the latter inevitably find expression in the grammatical categories of the language, and in the laws of syntax which it follows.
[6. THE THINKING OF PRIMITIVE MAN.]
From the point of view just developed, the investigation of the grammatical forms of primitive language is of particular importance for the psychology of primitive man. True, as has already been remarked, the languages of the most primitive tribes have not been preserved to us in their original form. And yet it is in this very realm of grammatical forms, far more even than in that of sound pictures and onomatopoetic words, that the Soudan languages possess characteristics which mark them as the expression of processes of thought that have remained on a relatively primitive level. This is indicated primarily by the fact that these languages lack what we would call grammatical categories. As regards this point, Westermann's grammar of the Ewe language is in entire agreement with the much earlier results which Steinthal reached in his investigation of the Manda language, which is also of the Soudan region. These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct succession without any intermediate inflectional elements to modify their meaning. Philologists usually call such languages 'root-languages,' because a sound complex that carries the essential meaning of a word, apart from all modifying elements, is called by their science a verbal root. In the Latin word fero, fer, meaning 'to bear,' is the root from which all modifications of the verb ferre (to carry) are formed by means of suffixal elements. If, therefore, a language consists of sound complexes having the nature of roots, it is called a root-language. As a matter of fact, however, the languages under discussion consist purely of detached, monosyllabic words; the conception 'root,' which itself represents the product of a grammatical analysis of our flectional languages, may only improperly be applied to them. Such a language is composed of detached monosyllabic words, each of which has a meaning, yet none of which falls under any particular grammatical category. One and the same monosyllabic word may denote an object, an act, or a quality, just as in gesture-language the gesture of striking may denote the verb 'to strike' and also the noun 'blow.' From this it is evident to what extent the expressions 'root' and 'root-language' carry over into this primitive language a grammatical abstraction which is entirely inappropriate in case they suggest the image of a root. This image originated among grammarians at a time when the view was current that, just as the stem and branches of a plant grow out of its root, so also in the development of a language does a word always arise out of a group of either simple or composite sounds that embody the main idea. But the component parts of a language are certainly not roots in this sense; every simple monosyllabic word combines with others, and from this combination there result, in part, modifications in meaning, and, in part, sentences. Language, thus, does not develop by sprouting and growing, but by agglomeration and agglutination. Now, the Soudan languages are characterized by the fact that they possess very few such fixed combinations in which the individual component parts have lost their independence. In this respect, accordingly, they resemble gesture-language. The latter also is unfamiliar with grammatical categories in so far as these apply to the words themselves; the very same signs denote objects, actions, and qualities—indeed, generally even that for which in our language we employ particles. This agreement with gesture-language is brought home to us most strikingly if we consider the words which the primitive spoken languages employ for newly formed ideas—such, for instance, as refer to previously unknown objects of culture. Here it appears that the speaker always forms the new conception by combining into a series those ideas with which he is more familiar. When schools were introduced into Togo, for example, and a word for 'slate-pencil' became necessary, the Togo negroes called it 'stone scratch something'—that is, a stone with which we scratch something. Similarly 'kitchen,' an arrangement unknown to these tribes, was referred to as 'place cook something'; 'nail,' as 'iron head broad.' The single word always stands for a sensibly perceptual object, and the new conception is formed, not, as epistemologists commonly suppose, by means of a comparison of various objects, but by arranging in sequence those perceptual ideas whose combined characteristics constitute the conception. The same is true with regard to the expressions for such thought relations as are variously indicated in our language by the inflections of substantive, adjective, and verb. The Soudan languages make no unambiguous distinction between noun and verb. Much less are the cases of the substantive, or the moods and tenses of the verb, distinguished; to express these distinctions, separate words are always used. Thus, 'the house of the king' is rendered as 'house belong king.' The conception of case is here represented by an independent perception that crowds in between the two ideas which it couples together. The other cases are, as a rule, not expressed at all, but are implied in the connection. Similarly, verbs possess no future tense to denote future time. Here also a separate word is introduced, one that may be rendered by 'come.' 'I go come' means 'I shall go'; or, to mention the preterit, 'I go earlier' means 'I went.' Past time, however, may also be expressed by the immediate repetition of the word, a sensibly perceptual sign, as it were, that the action is completed. When the Togo negro says 'I eat,' this means 'I am on the point of eating'; when he says 'I eat eat,' it means 'I have eaten.'
But ideas of such acts and conditions as are in themselves of a perceptual nature are also occasionally expressed by combining several elements which are obtained by discriminating the separate parts of a perceptual image. The idea to bring, for example, is expressed by the Togo negro as 'take, go, give.' In bringing something to some one, one must first take it, then go to him and give it to him. It therefore happens that the word 'go,' in particular, is frequently added even where we find no necessity for especially emphasizing the act of going. Thus, the Togo negro would very probably express the sentence, 'The angry teacher strikes the child,' in the following way: 'Man-school-angry-go-strike-child.' This is the succession that directly presents itself to one who thinks in pictures, and it therefore finds expression in language. Whenever conceptions require a considerable number of images in order to be made picturable, combinations that are equivalent to entire sentences may result in a similar manner. Thus, the Togo negro expresses the concept 'west' by the words 'sun-sit-place'—that is, the place where the sun sits down. He thinks of the sun as a personal being who, after completing his journey, here takes a seat.
These illustrations may suffice to indicate the simplicity and at the same time the complexity of such a language. It is simple, in that it lacks almost all grammatical distinctions; it is complicated, because, in its constant reliance on sensibly perceptual images, it analyses our concepts into numerous elements. This is true not merely of abstract concepts, which these languages, as a rule, do not possess, but even of concrete empirical concepts. We need only refer to the verb 'to bring,' reduced to the form of three verbs, or the concept 'west,' for whose expression there is required not only the sun and the location which we must give it but also its act of seating itself. In all of these traits, then, primitive language is absolutely at one with gesture-language.