6 AID TO AMERICAN LINGUISTICS. 



its words has disappeared, the fewer points of contact can it retain with 

 signs. The higher languages are more precise because the conscious- 

 ness of the derivation of most of their words is lost, so that they have 

 become counters, good for any sense agreed upon ; but in our native dia- 

 lects, which have not advanced in that direction to the degree exhibited by 

 those of civilized man, the connection between the idea and the word is 

 only less obvious than that still unbroken between the idea and the 

 sign, and they remain strongly affected by the concepts of outline, 'form, 

 place, position, and feature on which gesture is founded, while they are 

 similar in their fertile combination of radicals. For these reasons the forms 

 of sign-language adopted by our Indians will be of special value to the 

 student of American linguistics. 



A comparison sometimes drawn between signdanguage and that of 

 our Indians, founded on the statement of their common poverty in abstract 

 expressions, is not just to either. Allusion has before been made to the 

 capacities of the gesture-speech in that regard, and a deeper study into 

 Indian tongues has shown that they are by no means so confined to the con- 

 crete as was once believed. 



Indian language consists of a series of words that are but slightly differ- 

 entiated parts of speech following each other in the order suggested in the 

 mind of the speaker without absolute laws of arrangement, as its sentences 

 are not completely integrated. The sentence necessitates parts of speech, 

 and parts of speech are possible only when a language has reached that 

 stage where sentences are logically constructed. The words of an Indian 

 tongue being synthetic or undifferentiated parts of speech, are in this respect 

 strictly analogous to the gesture elements which enter into a sign-language. 

 The study of the latter is therefore valuable for comparison with the words 

 of the speech. The one language throws much light upon the other, and 

 neither can be studied to the best advantage without a knowledge of the 



other. 



ORIGIN AND EXTENT OF GESTURE-SPEECH. 



It is an accepted maxim that nothing is thoroughly understood unless 

 its beginning is known. While this can never be absolutely accomplished 

 for sign-language, it may be traced to, and claims general interest from, 



