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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. No 538 



SCIENCE: 



Published by N. D. C. HODGES, 874 Broadway, New York. 



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SIGN LANGUAGE IN PRINT. 



BY FEEDEKICK STARE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILL. 



My attention has lately been called to a matter which seems to 

 me of some interest. It is well known to all readers of Science 

 that gesture language is a common m.eans of communication be- 

 tween our different Indian tribes. 



Mr. Lewis Hadley of Chicago is at present engaged upon a plan 

 for reducing the sign language to print. The purpose of the 

 work is benevolent and religious, the idea lieing to bring re- 

 ligious instruction to the old Indians. It is well known that old 

 Indians will never learn to read our language. It is believed by 

 Mr. Hadley and his friends that they will quickly leam a printed 

 sign language. Of course, all these old men make constant use of 

 gestures and signs ; and, if they take kindly to the printed gestures, 

 there is no question that considerable progress might be made. 



Mr. Hadley has had difficulties to contend with in carrying out 

 his work. He has been hampered by the lack of funds and by 

 the novelty of the undertaking. In his first experiment he cut 

 the dies for printing himself, and the resulting impressions were 

 black designs with the figures in white lines, and the result was 

 exceedingly ugly. He has since then simplified the designs and 

 made them in the form of ordinary type, and has now an exten- 

 sive font of several thousand types, which will be used in printing 

 cards and tracts for the instruction of the Indians. 



There are two points to be considered in reference to this plan : 

 First, its feasibility; second, its methodology. 



There are three questions that arise in reference to feasibility : — 

 1. Is there a universal sign language among the Indians? 

 3. Can the signs be represented by type ? 

 3. Will the Indians care to learn it? 



1. As regards the first of these, Mallery says that there is no ab- 

 solutely fixed sign language in general use among the Indians. 

 While this is true, it is also true that all Indians gesture, and the 

 gestures are so natural and so self-expressive that there is no 

 question that natural signs, although new, would be generally 

 understood. 



3. There is, of course, a difficulty in representing the gestures 

 by type so that they can be readily recognized. This difficulty 

 all who have attempted to work in the subject of gesture language 

 realize. Mr. Hadley has changed the forms of his type repeatedly. 

 He has produced finally what appears to be simple, plain, and 

 easily understood characters. Many of these may have to be 

 still further changed, but in large measure they meet the requu-e- 

 ments. 



3. There is a very serious question as to the favorable reception 

 of this printed gesture language by the Indians themselves. It 

 is, however, in a certain sense picture- «riting, and picture-writ- 

 ing is natural to the North American. Mr. Hadley is doing, on a 

 large scale and at one stroke, what the Indians have begun to do 

 in many cases. Colonel Mallery has shown in his papers the 



close relationship between gesture language and pictography. 

 The picture character is often only an attempt to represent a 

 gesture. This being so, it may be possible that a kind reception 

 will be given by the Indians to the printed sign language. 



As to the method of introducing the printed sign language into 

 use, Mr. Hadley has devised a game of cards, which, he believes, 

 will help greatly in the work of teaching. Each card has upon 

 its face, in unusually large type, a gesture. Upon its back is ■ 

 printed the English equivalent for the gesture. The game to be 

 played with these cards is based upon certain gambling games, 

 already quite familiar to the Indian, and success in the game de- 

 pends upon the Indian giving the English word for the sign 

 represented. All games of an instructive kind are more or less 

 of a nuisance, but it is not impassible that these cards may be 

 successful in the way they are intended. Besides the game of 

 cards, the purpose of which is really to teach the speaking and 

 reading of English through the printed sign language, a consid- 

 erable number of texts, mainly of a religious character, are to 

 be issued. It is expected that an Indian who has a story or a 

 passage printed in the sign character will himself make the signs 

 represented, and by making the signs he will gain the idea to be 

 conveyed . 



Every text of the sign type has under it the English equivalent 

 words. In order to convey an idea what this test is like, I present 

 herewith a line of the text as it appears in print. 



^.i.y 



VEN. DAY AFTER 



FOOD GIVE- US 



It will be seen that, quite apart from its religious and educa- 

 tional purpose, this matter is one of scientific importance, and we 

 shall watch with interest how far it mav succeed. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY.— XXVIII. 



[Edited by D. G. Brinton, M.D., LL.D., D.Sc.} 



The Present Position of the Hittite Question. 



The ethnic position of the Hittites has been a perplexing ques- 

 tion for many years. It seems to have been answered in a cer- 

 tain degree by the recent excavations of Von Lusclian at Sindjirii, 

 which is in ancient Hittite territory. Halevy has shown that the 

 two stelas brought from there to Berlin are in a Phoenician dia- 

 lect. The Hittites of the Bible were, therefore, probably 

 Semites. 



Unfortunately, this solution leaves the real problem un- 

 touched; for it is now clearly established by Belck, Lehmann, 

 and others, that the mysterious syllabic inscriptions and bas- 

 reliefs at Pterie, Nymphi, and about Lake Van, were not by the 

 Semitic Hittites, but by a wholly different people, who called 

 themselves Chaldi, after their chief divinity, Chaldis. To their 

 land they gave the name Biaina (Urartu, — Ararat, in Assyrian), 

 and their chief city Van, their own iiame of which was Tuspa-na, 

 was founded about 833, B.C., by their early king, Menuas. 



The confusion partly arose from the fact that the Semitic Hit- 

 tites, previously tributary to the Assyrian monarchs, were subju- 

 gated by the Chaldi king, Argistis I., about 800, B.C. ; and, fur- 

 ther, that at the fall of the Chaldic kingdom, about the close of 

 the seventh century, B.C., many of the Chaldic people were 

 driven southward into Cilicia and its neighborhood. 



The question therefore remains. Who were the Chaldi? The 

 prevailing theory has been that their language had Mongolian or 

 Turkish affinities; but Professor Sayce has pretty clearly shown 

 that it had regular declensions, a nominative ending in s, an 

 accusative in n, oblique cases in terminal vowels, and an adjec- 

 tive which followed the noun and agreed with it in these respects. 

 This is not at all analogous to any Mongolian or Turanian lan- 

 guage, and, if correct, disproves the theory. 



A bolder one is advanced, not entirely tor the first-time, by M. 

 Salomon Reinach in the Revue Archeologique for January. He 

 maintains that the migration of the Chaldi, or supposed Hittites, 



