TONE AND GESTURE, 119 



predicant docs 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 thoi 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 ' ; hoty ' warm — much.* The amount or force of motion 

 also often indicates corresponding diminution or augmenta- 

 tion, but sometimes expresses a different shade of meaning, 

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