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 this division are placed signs of
differing forms which are used in senses so nearly the same
as to have only a slight shade of distinction, or sometimes
to be practically interchangeable. The comprehensive and
metaphorical character of signs renders more of them
interchangeable than is the case with words; still, like
words, some signs with essential resemblance of meaning have
partial and subordinate differences made by etymology or
usage. Doubtless signs are purposely selected as delineating
the most striking outlines of an object, or the most
characteristic features of an action; but different
individuals, and likewise different bodies of people, would
not always agree in the selection of those outlines and
features. Taking the illustration of the attempt to invent a
sign for bird, before used, any one of a dozen, signs
might have been agreed upon with equal appropriateness, and,
in fact, a number have been so selected by several
individuals and tribes, each one, therefore, being a synonym
of the other. Another example of this is in the signs for
deer, designated by various modes of expressing
fleetness, by his gait when not in rapid motion, by the
shape of his horns, by the color of his tail, and sometimes
by combinations of several of those characteristics. Each of
these signs may be indefinitely abbreviated, and therefore
create indefinite diversity. Another illustration, in which
an association of ideas is apparent, is in the upward
raising of the index in front of and above the head, which
means above (sometimes containing the religious
conception of heaven, great spirit, &c.), and also
now, to-day. Not unfrequently these several signs to
express the same ideas are used interchangeably by the same
people, and some one of the duplicates or triplicates may
have been noticed by separate observers to the exclusion of
the others. On the other hand, they might all have been
noticed, but each one among different bodies. Thus confusing
reports would be received, which might either be erroneous
in deducing the prevalence of particular signs or the
opposite. Sometimes the synonym may be recognized as an
imported sign, used with another tribe known to affect it.
Sometimes the diverse signs to express the same thing are
only different trials at reaching the intelligence of the
person addressed. An account is given by Lieut. Heber M.
Creel, Seventh Cavalry, U.S.A., of an old Cheyenne squaw,
who made about twenty successive and original signs to a
recruit of the Fourth Cavalry to let him know that she
wanted to obtain out of a wagon a piece of cloth belonging
to her, to wipe out an oven preparatory to baking bread.
Thus by tradition, importation, recent invention, or from
all these causes together, several signs entirely distinct
are produced for the same object or action.
This class is not intended to embrace the cases common both
to sign and oral language where the same sign has several
meanings, according to the expression, whether facial or
vocal, and the general manner accompanying its delivery. The
sign given, for "stop talking" on page 339 may be used in
simple acquiescence, "very well," "all right!" or for
comprehension, "I understand;" or in impatience, "you have
talked enough!" which may be carried further to express
actual anger in the violent "shut up!" But all these grades
of thought accompany the idea of a cessation of talk. In
like manner an acquaintance of the writer asking the same
favor (a permission to go through their camp) of two chiefs,
was answered by both with the sign generally used for
repletion after eating, viz., the index and thumb turned
toward the body, passed up from the abdomen to the throat;
but in the one case, being made with a gentle motion and
pleasant look, it meant, "I am satisfied," and granted the
request; in the other, made violently, with the
accompaniment of a truculent frown, it read, "I have had
enough of that!" But these two meanings might also have been
expressed by different intonations of the English word
"enough." The class of signs now in view is better
exemplified by the French word souris, which is
spelled and pronounced precisely the same with the two
wholly distinct and independent significations of smile
and mouse. From many examples may be selected the
Omaha sign for think, guess, which is precisely the
same as that of the Absaroka, Shoshoni and Banak for
brave, see page 414. The context alone, both of the sign
and the word, determines in what one of its senses it is at
the time used, but it is not discriminated merely by a
difference in expression.
It would have been very remarkable if precisely the same
sign were not used by different or even the same persons or
bodies of people with wholly distinct significations. The
graphic forms for objects and ideas are much more likely to
be coincident than sound is for similar expressions, yet in
all oral languages the same precise sound is used for
utterly diverse meanings. The first conception of many
different objects must have been the same. It has been
found; indeed, that the homophony of words and the
homomorphy of ideographic pictures is noticeable in opposite
significations, the conceptions arising from the opposition
itself. The differentiation in portraiture or accent is a
subsequent and remedial step not taken until after the
confusion has been observed and become inconvenient. Such
confusion and contradiction would only be eliminated if sign
language were absolutely perfect as well as absolutely
universal.
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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
