GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WOltD-LANGUAGE. Gl

for an elaborate examination of which I would especially refer to
the researches of Professor Pott, of Halle. 1 But it may be worth
while to call attention to an apparent resemblance of two divisions
of the root-words of our Aryan languages to the two great classes
of gesture-signs. Professor Max Miiller divides the Sanskrit
root-forms into two classes, the predicative roots, such as to
shine, to extend, and so forth ; and the demonstrative roots, "a
small class of independent radicals, not predicative in the usual
sense of the word, but simply pointing, simply expressive of
existence under certain more or less definite, local or temporal
prescriptions." 3 If we take from among the examples given,
here, there, this, that, thou, he, as types, we have a division of
the elements of the Sanskrit language to which a division of the
signs of the deaf-mute into predicative and demonstrative would
at least roughly correspond. Many centuries ago the Indian
grammarians made desperate efforts to bring pronouns and verbs,
as the Germans say, " under one hat." They deduced the demon-
strative ta from tan, to stretch, and the relative ya from yag, to
worship. Unity is pleasant to mankind, who are often ready to
sacrifice things of more consequence than etymology for it. But
perhaps, after all, the world may not have been constructed for
the purpose of providing for the human mind just what it is
pleased to ask for. Of course, any full comparison of speech
and the gesture-language would have to go into the hard problem
of the relation of prepositions to adverbs and pronouns on the
one hand, and to verb-roots on the other. As to this matter, I
can only say that the educated deaf-mute puts his right fore-
finger into the palm of his left hand to say " in," takes it out
again to say " out," puts his right hand above or below his left
to say "above " or "below," etc., which are imitative signs, very
likely learnt from the teacher. But the natural gestures with
which he shows that anything is "above me," "behind me,"
and so on, are of a more direct character, and are rather demon-
strative than predicative.
