I must now allude to the results of our previous inquiry touching “the syntax of gesture-language.” For comparison will show that in all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the most original and immediately graphic mode of communication, bears a striking resemblance to that which is presented by the earliest forms of articulate language, both as revealed by philology and in “baby-talk.”[271] Thus, as we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar properly so called. The same sign stands for ‘walk,’ ‘walkest,’ ‘walking,’ ‘walked,’ ‘walker.’ Adjectives and verbs are not easily distinguished by the deaf and dumb. Indeed, our elaborate system of parts of speech is but little applicable to the gesture-language.” Next, to quote again only one of the numerous examples previously given to show the primitive order of apposition, whereby the language of gesture serves to convey a predication, “I should be punished if I were lazy and naughty” would be put, “I lazy, naughty, no!—lazy, naughty, I punished; yes!” Again, “to make is too abstract for the deaf-mute; to show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the carpenter makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the coat and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a proposition as ‘Rain makes the land fruitful’ would not come into his way of thinking: ‘Rain, fall; plants, grow,’ would be his pictorial (_i.e._ receptual) expression.” Elsewhere this writer remarks that the absence of any distinction between substantive, adjective, and verb, which is universal in gesture-language, is customary in Chinese, and not unknown even in English. “To _butter_ 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.’” And similarly as to the substantive-adjective, in such words as _iron-stone_, _feather-grass_, _chesnut-horse_, &c.; here the mere apposition of the words constitutes the one an attribution of the other, as is the case in gesture-language. And not only in Chinese, but as shown in the last chapter, in a great number and variety of savage tongues this mode of construction is habitual. In all these cases distinctions between parts of speech can be rendered only by syntax; and this syntax is the syntax of gesture.