26 THE GESTUEE-LANGUAGE. 



and that for ' 1/ without adding that for ' give.' "^ The fol- 

 lowLQg remarks, sent to me by Dr. Scott, seem to agree with 

 this view. " With regard to the two sentences you give (I 

 struck Tom with a stick, Tom struck me with a stick), the 

 sequence in the introduction of the particular parts would, in 

 some measure, depend on the part that most attention was 

 wished to be drawn towards. If a mere telling of the fact was 

 required, my opiuion is that it would be arranged so, ' I-Tom- 

 struck-a-stick,' and the passive form iu a similar manner, with 

 the change of Tom first. But these sentences are not gene- 

 rally said by the deaf-and-dumb without their having been 

 interested in the fact, and then, in coming to tell of them, they 

 first give that part they are most anxious to impress upon their 

 hearer. Thus if a boy had struck another boy, and the injured 

 party came to tell us ; if he was desii'ous to impress us with 

 the idea that a particular boy did it, he would point to the boy 

 first. But if he was anxious to di'aw attention to his own 

 suffering, rather than to the person by whom it was caused, he 

 would point to himself and make the sign of striking, and then 

 point to the boy ; or if he was wishful to draw attention to the 

 cause of his suffering, he might sign the striking fii-st, and 

 then tell afterwards by whom it was done." 



Dr. Scott is, so far as I know, the only person who has 

 attempted to lay down a set of distinct rules for the syntax of 

 the gesture-language.^ " The subject comes before the attri- 

 bute, . . . the object before the action." A third construction is 

 common, though not necessary, " the modifier after the modi- 

 fied." The first consti'uction, by which the horse is put before 

 the " black," enables the deaf-mute to make his syntax supply, 

 to some extent, the distinction between adjective and sub- 

 stantive, which his imitative signs do not themselves express. 

 The other two are well exemplified by a remark of the Abbe 

 Sicard's. " A pupil, to whom I one day put this question, 

 ' Who made God ? ' and who replied, ' God made nothing,' 

 left me in no doubt as to this kind of inversion, usual to the 

 deaf-and-dumb, when I went on to ask him, ' Who made the 

 shoe ? ' and he answered, ' The shoe made the shoemaker.' "^ 



' Schmalz, p. 274. " Scott, ' The Deaf and Dumb,' p. 53. 

 ^ Sicard, ' Theoric,' p. xxviii. 



