360 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
ever, a grouping and sequence of the ideographic pictures, an arrange- 
ment of signs in connected succession, which may be classed under the 
scholastic head of syntax. This subject, with special reference to the 
order of deaf-mute signs as compared with oral speech, has been the 
theme of much discussion, some notes of which, condensed from the 
speculations of M. Rémi Valade and others, follow in the next para- 
graph without further comment than Hay invite attention to the pro- 
found remark of LEIBNITZ. 
In mimic construction there are to be considered both the order in 
which the signs succeed one another and the relative positions in which 
they are made, the latter remaining longer in the memory than the 
former, and spoken language may sometimes in its early infancy have 
reproduced the ideas of a sign picture without commencing from the 
same point. So the order, as in Greek and Latin, is very variable. In 
nations among whom the alphabet was introduced without the inter- 
mediary to any impressive degree of picture-writing, the order being (1) 
language of signs, almost superseded by (2) spoken language, and (3) 
alphabetic writing, men would write in the order in which they had 
been accustomed to speak. But if at a time when spoken language 
was still rudimentary, intercourse being mainly carried on by signs, 
figurative writing had been invented, the order of the figures would be 
the order of the signs, and the same order would pass into the spoken 
language. Hence LEIBNITZ says truly that “the writing of the Chinese 
might seem to have been invented by a deaf person.” The oral language 
has not known the phases which have given to the Indo-European 
tongues their formation and grammatical parts. In the latter, signs 
were conquered by speech, while in the former, speech received the 
yoke. 
Sign language cannot show by inflection the reciprocal dependence of 
words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal in- 
tonation are only used rhetorically or for degrees of comparison. The 
relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by placement, and 
their connection is established when necessary by the abstraction of 
ideas. The sign talker is an artist, grouping persons and things so as 
to show the relations between them, and the effect is that which is seen 
ina picture. But though the artist has the advantage in presenting in 
a permanent connected scene the result of several transient signs, he can 
only present it as it appears at a single moment. The sign talker has 
the succession of time at his disposal, and his scenes move and act, are 
localized and animated, and their arrangement is therefore more varied 
and significant. 
It is not satisfactory to give the order of equivalent words as repre- 
sentative of the order of signs, because the pictorial arrangement is 
wholly lost; but adopting this expedient as a mere illustration of the 
sequence in the presentation of signs by deaf-mutes, the following is 
quoted from an essay by Rev. J. R. Keep, in American Annals of the 
