GESTUEE-LANGUAGE AND WORD -LANGUAGE. 63 



the same, the imitation of spreading with his finger on the 

 palm of his hand. To batter bread, to cudgel a man, to oil 

 machinery, to pepper a dish, and scores of such expressions, 

 involve action and instrument in one word, and that word a 

 substantive treated as the root or crude form of a verb. Such 

 expressions are concretisms, picture -words, gesture-words, as 

 much as the deaf-and-dumb man's one sign for " butter^' and 

 " buttering." To separate these words, and to say that there 

 is one butter, a noun, and another butter, a verb, may be con- 

 venient for the dictionary ; but to pretend that there is a real 

 distinction between the words is a mere grammatical juggle, 

 like saying that the noun man has a nominative case man, and 

 an objective case which is also man, and much of the rest of 

 the curious system of putting new wine into old bottles, and 

 stretching the organism of a live language upon a dead frame- 

 work, which is commonly taught as English Grammar. 



The reference of substantives to a verb-root in the Aryan 

 languages and elsewhere is thoroughly in harrtiony with the 

 spirit of the gesturorlanguage. Thus, the horse is the neigher ; 

 stone is what stands, is stable; water is that which waves, 

 undulates ; the mouse is the stealer; ajx age is what goes on; 

 the oar is what mahes to go ; the serpent is the cfeeper ; and 

 so on ; that is to say, the etymologies of these words lead us 

 back to the actions of neighing, standing, waving, stealing, 

 etc. Now, the deaf-and-dumb Kruse tells us that even to the 

 mute who has no meapis of copiniunication but signs, " the 

 bird is what flies, the fish what swiras, the plant what sprouts 

 out of the earth." ^ It may be said that action, and form 

 resulting from action, form the staple of that part of the 

 gesture-language which occupies itself with suggesting to the 

 mind that which it does not bring bodily before it. But, 

 though there is so much similarity of principle in the formation 

 of gesture- signs and words, there is no general correspondence 

 in the particular idea chosen to name an object by ia the two 

 kinds of utterance. 



In the second place, with regard to the syntax of the 

 gesture-language, it is hardly possible to compare it with 



' Kruse, p. 53, 



