Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/36

26 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 opinion is that it would be arranged so, 'I-Tom-struck-a-stick,' and the passive form in a similar manner, with the change of Tom first. But these sentences are not generally 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 desirous 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 draw 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 first, and then tell afterwards by whom it was done."

Dr. Scott has attempted to lay down a set of distinct rules for the syntax of the gesture-language. "The subject comes before the attribute, . . . the object before the action." A third construction is common, though not necessary, "the modifier after the modified." The first rule, as exemplified in "horse black," enables the deaf-mute to make his syntax supply, to some extent, the distinction between adjective and substantive, which his imitative signs do not themselves express. The other two are illustrated by a remark of the Abbé 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.'" So when Laura Bridgman, who was blind as well as deaf-and-dumb, had learnt to communicate ideas by spelling words on her fingers, she would say "Shut door," "Give book;" no doubt because she had learnt these sentences whole; but when she made sentences for herself, she would go back to the natural deaf-and-dumb syntax, and spell out "Laura bread give," to ask for bread to be given her, and "water drink Laura,"