Sign Language Among North American Indians 20

Sign Language Among North American Indians 20

The readiness with which a significance may be found in signs when

none whatever exists is also shown in the great contest narrated

by Rabelais between Panurge and the English philosopher, Thaumast,

commencing as follows:

 

"Everybody then taking heed in great silence, the Englishman lifted

his two hands separately, clinching the ends of his fingers in the

form that at Chion they call the fowl's tail. Then he struck them,

together by the nails four times. Then he opened them and struck one

flat upon the other with a clash once; after which, joining them as

above, he struck twice, and four times afterwards, on opening them.

Then he placed them, joined and extended the one above the other,

seeming to pray God devoutly.

 

"Panurge suddenly moved his right hand in the air, placed the

right-hand thumb at the right-hand nostril, holding the four fingers

stretched out and arrayed in parallel lines with the point of the

nose; shutting the left eye entirely, and winking with the right,

making a profound depression with eyebrow and eyelid. Next he raised

aloft the left with a strong clinching and extension of the four

fingers and elevation of the thumb, and held it in line directly

corresponding with the position of the right, the distance between the

two being a cubit and a half. This done, in the like manner he lowered

towards the ground both hands, and finally held them in the midst as

if aiming straight at the Englishman's nose."

 

And so on at great length. The whole performance of Panurge was to

save the credit of Pantagruel by making fantastic and mystic motions

in pretended disputation with the signs given by Thaumast in good

faith. Yet the latter confessed himself conquered, and declared that

he had derived inestimable information from the purposely meaningless

gestures. The satire upon the diverse interpretations of the gestures

of Naz-de-cabre (_Pantagruel_, Book III, chap. xx) is to the same

effect, showing it to have been a favorite theme with Rabelais.

 

 

ABBREVIATIONS.

 

A lesson was learned by the writer as to the abbreviation of signs,

and the possibility of discovering the original meaning of those most

obscure, from the attempts of a Cheyenne to convey the idea of _old

man_. He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb

closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick,

bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the

stick held, as was before only imagined. Here at once was decrepit age

dependent on a staff. The principle of abbreviation or reduction may

be illustrated by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding

the use of the voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird

on a tree, and failing to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs

are resorted to, perhaps suggesting the bill and wings of the bird,

its manner of clinging to the twig with its feet, its size by seeming

to hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the

same hue; perhaps by the action of shooting into a tree, picking up

the supposed fallen game, and plucking feathers. These are continued

until understood, and if one sign or combination of signs proves to

be successful it will be repeated on the next occasion by both persons

engaged, and after becoming familiar between them and others will be

more and more abbreviated. Conventionality in signs largely consists

in the form of abbreviation which is agreed upon. When the signs of

the Indians have from ideographic form thus become demotic, they may

be called conventional, but still not arbitrary. In them, as in all

his actions, man had at the first a definite meaning or purpose,

together with method in their subsequent changes or modifications.

 

Colonel Dodge gives a clear account of the manner in which an

established sign is abbreviated in practice, as follows: "There are an

almost infinite number and variety of abbreviations. For instance, to

tell a man to 'talk,' the most common formal sign is made thus: Hold

the right hand in front of, the back near, the mouth, end of thumb and

index-finger joined into an 'O,' the outer fingers closed on the palm;

throw the hand forward sharply by a quick motion of the wrist, and at

the same time flip forward the index-finger. This may be done once or

several times.

 

"The formal sign to 'cease' or 'stop doing' anything is made by

bringing the two hands open and held vertically in front of the

body, one behind the other, then quickly pass one upward, the other

downward, simulating somewhat the motion of the limbs of a pair

of scissors, meaning 'cut it off.' The latter sign is made in

conversation in a variety of ways, but habitually with one hand only.

 

"The formal sign to 'stop talking' is first to make the formal sign

for 'talk,' then the formal sign for 'cut;' but this is commonly

abbreviated by first making the formal sign for 'talk' with the

right hand, and then immediately passing the same hand, open, fingers

extended, downward across and in front of the mouth, 'talk, cut.'

 

"But though the Plains Indian, if asked for the sign to 'stop

talking,' will properly give the sign either in its extended or

abbreviated form as above, he in conversation abbreviates it so much

further that the sign loses almost all resemblance to its former self.

Whatever the position of the hand, a turn of the wrist, a flip of the

forefinger, and a turn, of the wrist back to its original position is

fully equivalent to the elaborate signs."

 

It may be added that nearly every sign which to be intelligibly

described and as exhibited in full requires the use of both hands, is

outlined, with one hand only, by skillful Indians gesturing between

themselves, so as to be clearly understood between them. Two Indians,

whose blankets are closely held to their bodies by the left hand,

which is necessarily rendered unavailable for gesture, will severally

thrust the right from beneath the protecting folds and converse

freely. The same is true when one hand of each holds the bridle of a

horse.

 

The Italian signs are also made in such abbreviated forms as to be

little more than hinted at, requiring a perfect knowledge of the full

and original form before the slight and often furtive suggestion of it

can be understood. Deaf-mutes continually seek by tacit agreement to

shorten their signs more and more. While the original of each may be

preserved in root or stem, it is only known to the proficient, as

the root or stem of a plant enables botanists, but no others, to

distinguish it. Thus the natural character of signs, the universal

significance which is their peculiarly distinctive feature, may

and often does become lost. From the operation of the principle of

independent and individual abbreviation inherent in all sign language,

without any other cause, that of the Indians must in one or two

generations have become diverse, even if it had in fact originated

from one tribe in which all conceptions and executions were absolute.

 

 

 

_ARE SIGNS CONVENTIONAL OR INSTINCTIVE?_

 

There has been much discussion on the question whether gesture signs

were originally invented, in the strict sense of that term, or whether

they result from a natural connection between them and the ideas

represented by them, that is whether they are conventional or

instinctive. Cardinal Wiseman (_Essays_, III, 537) thinks that they

are of both characters; but referring particularly to the Italian

signs and the proper mode of discovering their meaning, observes that

they are used primarily with words and from the usual accompaniment of

certain phrases. "For these the gestures become substitutes, and then

by association express all their meaning, even when used alone."

This would be the process only where systematic gestures had never

prevailed or had been so disused as to be forgotten, and were adopted

after elaborate oral phrases and traditional oral __EXPRESSION__s had

become common. In other parts of this paper it is suggested that

conventionality chiefly consists in abbreviation, and that signs are

originally self-interpreting, independent of words, and therefore in a

certain sense instinctive.

 

Another form of the above query, having the same intent, is whether

signs are arbitrary or natural. The answer will depend upon what the

observer considers to be natural to himself. A common sign among

both deaf-mutes and Indians for _woman_ consists in designating the

arrangement of the hair, but such a represented arrangement of

hair familiar to the gesturer as had never been seen by the person

addressed would not seem "natural" to the latter. It would be

classed as arbitrary, and could not be understood without context

or explanation, indeed without translation such as is required from

foreign oral speech. Signs most naturally, that is, appropriately,

expressing a conception of the thing signified, are first adopted and

afterwards modified by circumstances of environment, so as to appear,

without full understanding, conventional and arbitrary, yet they

are as truly "natural" as the signs for hearing, seeing, eating, and

drinking, which continue all over the world as they were first formed

because there is no change in those operations.

 

 

 

_CLASSES OF DIVERSITIES IN SIGNS._

 

While there is not sufficient evidence that any exhibition of sign

language in any tribe is a dialect derived or corrupted from an

ascertained language in any other tribe, it still is convenient to

consider the different forms appearing in different tribes as several

dialects (in the usual mode of using that term) of a common language.

Every sign talker necessarily has, to some extent, a dialect of his

own. No one can use sign language without original invention and

without modification of the inventions of others; and all such new

inventions and modifications have a tendency to spread and influence

the production of other variations. The diversities thus occasioned

are more distinct than that mere individuality of style or __EXPRESSION__

which may be likened to the differing chirography of men who write,

although such individual characteristics also constitute an important

element of confusion to the inexperienced observer. In differing

handwriting there is always an attempt or desire to represent an

alphabet which is essentially determinate, but no such fixedness or

limited condition of form restricts gesture speech.

 

Those variations and diversities of form and connected significance

specially calling for notice may be: 1st. In the nature of synonyms.

2d. Substantially the same form with such different signification as

not to be synonymous. 3d. Difference in significance produced by

such slight variation in form as to be, to a careless observer,

_symmorphic_.

 

 

SYNONYMS.

 

In this division are placed signs of differing forms which are used

in senses so nearly the same as to have only a slight shade of

distinction, or sometimes to be practically interchangeable. The

comprehensive and metaphorical character of signs renders more of them

interchangeable than is the case with words; still, like words,

some signs with essential resemblance of meaning have partial and

subordinate differences made by etymology or usage. Doubtless signs

are purposely selected as delineating the most striking outlines of

an object, or the most characteristic features of an action; but

different individuals, and likewise different bodies of people, would

not always agree in the selection of those outlines and features.

Taking the illustration of the attempt to invent a sign for _bird_,

before used, any one of a dozen, signs might have been agreed upon

with equal appropriateness, and, in fact, a number have been so

selected by several individuals and tribes, each one, therefore, being

a synonym of the other. Another example of this is in the signs for

_deer_, designated by various modes of expressing fleetness, by his

gait when not in rapid motion, by the shape of his horns, by the

color of his tail, and sometimes by combinations of several of those

characteristics. Each of these signs may be indefinitely abbreviated,

and therefore create indefinite diversity. Another illustration, in

which an association of ideas is apparent, is in the upward raising

of the index in front of and above the head, which means _above_ (sometimes containing the religious conception of _heaven, great spirit_, &c.), and also _now, to-day_.