FOWELLl PHIL0L0C4Y CLXV 



which still retained many of the characteristics of natural 

 language, became a means of communication between tribes 

 having diverse tongues. The gestures themselves, though 

 remaining largely natural, gradually became somewhat 

 developed conventionally. Notwithstanding these artificial 

 elements, gesture language in all history has been character- 

 ized by great crudity, and it largely resembles emotional lan- 

 guage because both of them are akin to natural language. The 

 gesture language which is found in tribal society was replaced 

 by written language, as we shall hereafter show; but new 

 gesture lang'uao'es have from time to time been devised for use 

 by those unfortunate people who have been born deaf or who 

 have by disease been rendered deaf Therefore the nature of 

 gesture speech is learned from the study of two distinct exam- 

 ples — the languages of intertribal society on one hand, and the 

 modern languages of deaf-mutes. 



While intertribal languages are founded on natural expres- 

 sion, and while some of the deaf-mute languages also are 

 founded on natural expression, others of the latter have a more 

 hiffhlv artificial or conventional structure. When the sounds 

 of spoken words are represented by manual signs, or the let- 

 ters of the alphabet are represented by finger-wrought signs, 

 then gesture language itself consists of signs for signs, the 

 vocal signs themselves standing for concepts. This form of 

 gesture speech is therefore very highly conventional. 



It is not consonant with our present purpose to further 

 enlarge on this topic; it is necessary only for us to mention 

 gesture language as one of the pentalogic series that the com- 

 plete series may be exhibited. 



Written Language 



Modem written languages differ from speech in that sounds 

 are represented by letters. Letters, therefore, are signs for 

 signs. When we study the history of the origin and growth 

 of written language we find that it does not always use the 

 method of representing sounds by written characters. In the 

 Chinese, for example, the written characters have no reference 

 to sounds as sounds are analyzed in phonics. Thus the Chi- 

 nese have no alphabet. When we come to investigate the 



