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!
There has been much discussion on the
question whether gesture signs were originally invented, in
the strict sense of that term, or whether they result from a
natural connection between them and the ideas represented by
them, that is whether they are conventional or instinctive.
Cardinal Wiseman (Essays, III, 537) thinks that they
are of both characters; but referring particularly to the
Italian signs and the proper mode of discovering their
meaning, observes that they are used primarily with words
and from the usual accompaniment of certain phrases. "For
these the gestures become substitutes, and then by
association express all their meaning, even when used
alone." This would be the process only where systematic
gestures had never prevailed or had been so disused as to be
forgotten, and were adopted after elaborate oral phrases and
traditional oral expressions had become common. In other
parts of this paper it is suggested that conventionality
chiefly consists in abbreviation, and that signs are
originally self-interpreting, independent of words, and
therefore in a certain sense instinctive.
Another form of the above query, having the same intent, is
whether signs are arbitrary or natural. The answer will
depend upon what the observer considers to be natural to
himself. A common sign among both deaf-mutes and Indians for
woman consists in designating the arrangement of the
hair, but such a represented arrangement of hair familiar to
the gesturer as had never been seen by the person addressed
would not seem "natural" to the latter. It would be classed
as arbitrary, and could not be understood without context or
explanation, indeed without translation such as is required
from foreign oral speech. Signs most naturally, that is,
appropriately, expressing a conception of the thing
signified, are first adopted and afterwards modified by
circumstances of environment, so as to appear, without full
understanding, conventional and arbitrary, yet they are as
truly "natural" as the signs for hearing, seeing, eating,
and drinking, which continue all over the world as they were
first formed because there is no change in those operations.
This site includes some historical
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
