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The association of words with their meanings must have grown up by some natural process, though at present the nature of the process is unknown. Spoken and written words are, of course, not the only way of conveying meaning. A large part of one of Wundt's two vast volumes on language in his "Volkerpsychologie" is concerned with gesture-language.
This is shewn by the pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, acting, painting, tattooing, and otherwise decorating themselves; in their mutual comprehension of gesture-language, by the same expression in their features, and by the same inarticulate cries, when excited by the same emotions.
Gerland, Dr., on the prevalence of infanticide; on the extinction of races. Gervais, P., on the hairiness of the gorilla; on the mandrill. Gesture-language. Ghost-moth, sexual difference of colour in the. Giard, M., disputes descent of vertebrates from Ascidians; colour of sponges and Ascidians; musky odour of Sphinx. Gibbon, voice of. Gibbon, Hoolock, nose of.
He possessed a rare inventive genius and was constantly on the alert to devise means for making the prisoners comfortable and to find out ways for carrying on secret correspondence. He invented a special language known only to himself and to the prisoners, and also a unique gesture-language.
We can imagine the eager interest that Diderot would have had in such curious observations as that gesture-language has something like a definite syntax; that it furnishes no means of distinguishing causation from sequence or simultaneity; that savages can understand and be understood with ease and certainty in a deaf-and-dumb school.
Her response to this was spontaneous. The warmth of her fingers invaded him. Her eyes were full of questioning. He gave a hearty sign of admiration. She flushed with pleasure, but made a naive, protesting gesture. She was deaf and dumb. Hilton had once a sister who was a mute. He knew that amazing primal gesture-language of the silent race, whom God has sent like one-winged birds into the world.
The fact that they carry with them some material thing, expresses in gesture-language such as is used by explorers towards natives whose speech is unknown to them the desire that actuates them. And thus much may be safely inferred, viz. that the desire is, at any rate, to prepossess favourably the person approached.
Meanwhile, words to serve the purpose of pure counting are all the scarcer because hands and feet supply in themselves an excellent means not only of calculating, but likewise of communicating, a number. It is the one case in which gesture-language can claim something like an independent status by the side of speech.
We cannot, however, imagine that the rites are, or in their origin were, absolutely without meaning or purpose. We must interpret them on the analogy of similar rites elsewhere, the purpose of which is expressed not merely, as in Australia, by gesture-language, but is reinforced by the spoken word.
He was then thinking that it was the most intelligent hand he had ever seen.... He determined to play a bold and surprising game. He had learned from her the alphabet of the fingers that is, how to spell words. He knew little gesture-language. He, therefore, spelled slowly: "Hawley is angry, because you love Hilton." The statement was so matter-of-fact, so sudden, that the girl had no chance.
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