While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
In observing the maxim that nothing can be thoroughly
understood unless its beginning is known, it becomes
necessary to examine into the origin of sign language
through its connection with that of oral speech. In this
examination it is essential to be free from the vague
popular impression that some oral language, of the general
character of that now used among mankind, is "natural" to
mankind. It will be admitted on reflection that all oral
languages were at some past time far less serviceable to
those using them than they are now, and as each particular
language has been thoroughly studied it has become evident
that it grew out of some other and less advanced form. In
the investigation of these old forms it has been so
difficult to ascertain how any of them first became a useful
instrument of inter-communication that many conflicting
theories on this subject have been advocated.
Oral language consists of variations and mutations of vocal
sounds produced as signs of thought and emotion. But it is
not enough that those signs should be available as the
vehicle of the producer's own thoughts. They must be also
efficient for the communication of such thoughts to others.
It has been, until of late years, generally held that
thought was not possible without oral language, and that, as
man was supposed to have possessed from the first the power
of thought, he also from the first possessed and used oral
language substantially as at present. That the latter, as a
special faculty, formed the main distinction between man and
the brutes has been and still is the prevailing doctrine. In
a lecture delivered before the British Association in 1878
it was declared that "animal intelligence is unable to
elaborate that class of abstract ideas, the formation of
which depends upon the faculty of speech." If instead of
"speech" the word "utterance" had been used, as including
all possible modes of intelligent communication, the
statement might pass without criticism. But it may be
doubted if there is any more necessary connection between
abstract ideas and sounds, the mere signs of thought, that
strike the ear, than there is between the same ideas and
signs addressed only to the eye.
The point most debated for centuries has been, not whether
there was any primitive oral language, but what that
language was. Some literalists have indeed argued from the
Mosaic narrative that because the Creator, by one
supernatural act, with the express purpose to form separate
peoples, had divided all tongues into their present
varieties, and could, by another similar exercise of power,
obliterate all but one which should be universal, the fact
that he had not exercised that power showed it not to be his
will that any man to whom a particular speech had been given
should hold intercourse with another miraculously set apart
from him by a different speech. By this reasoning, if the
study of a foreign tongue was not impious, it was at least
clear that the primitive language had been taken away as a
disciplinary punishment, as the Paradisiac Eden had been
earlier lost, and that, therefore, the search for it was as
fruitless as to attempt the passage of the flaming sword.
More liberal Christians have been disposed to regard the
Babel story as allegorical, if not mythical, and have
considered it to represent the disintegration of tongues out
of one which was primitive. In accordance with the advance
of linguistic science they have successively shifted back
the postulated primitive tongue from Hebrew to Sanscrit,
then to Aryan, and now seek to evoke from the vast deeps of
antiquity the ghosts of other rival claimants for precedence
in dissolution. As, however, the languages of man are now
recognized as extremely numerous, and as the very sounds of
which these several languages are composed are so different
that the speakers of some are unable to distinguish with the
ear certain sounds in others, still less able to reproduce
them, the search for one common parent language is more
difficult than was supposed by mediaeval ignorance.
The discussion is now, however, varied by the suggested
possibility that man at some time may have existed without
any oral language. It is conceded by some writers that
mental images or representations can be formed without any
connection with sound, and may at least serve for thought,
though not for expression. It is certain that concepts,
however formed, can be expressed by other means than sound.
One mode of this expression is by gesture, and there is less
reason to believe that gestures commenced as the
interpretation of, or substitute for words than that the
latter originated in, and served to translate gestures. Many
arguments have been advanced to prove that gesture language
preceded articulate speech and formed the earliest attempt
at communication, resulting from the interacting subjective
and objective conditions to which primitive man was exposed.
Some of the facts on which deductions have been based, made
in accordance with well-established modes of scientific
research from study of the lower animals, children, idiots,
the lower types of mankind, and deaf-mutes, will be briefly
mentioned.
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materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or
language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as
part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that
the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
