These inversions of our familiar order are suggestive. They have some resemblance to the curious order which appears in the spontaneous sign-making of deaf-mutes. Thus a deaf-mute answered the question, ‘Who made God?’ by saying, “God made nothing,” _i.e._, “nothing made God”. Similarly the deaf-mute Laura Bridgman expressed the petition, ‘Give Laura bread,’ by the form, ‘Laura bread give.’[106] Such inversions, as we know, are allowable and common in certain languages, _e.g._, Latin. The study of the syntax of child-language and of the sign-making of deaf-mutes might suggest that our English order is not in certain cases the most natural one. ----- Footnote 106: See Romanes, _op. cit._, p. 116 f., where other examples may be found. ----- A somewhat similar inversion of what seems to us the proper order appears in the child’s first attempts at negation. The child C. early in his third year expressed the idea that he was not going into the sea thus: ‘N. (his own name) go in water, no’. Similarly Pollock’s child expressed acquiescence in a prohibition in this manner, ‘Baby have papa (pepper) no,’ where the ‘no’ followed without a pause. The same order appears in the case of French children, _e.g._, ‘Papa non,’ _i.e._, ‘It is not Papa,’ and seems to be a common, if not a universal form of the first half-spontaneous sentence-building. Here again we see an analogy to the syntax of deaf-mutes, who appear to append the sign of negation in a similar way, _e.g._, ‘Teacher I beat, deceive, scold no,’ _i.e._, ‘I must not beat, deceive, scold my teacher’. We see something like it, too, in the formations of savage-languages, as when ‘fool no’ comes to be the sign of ‘not fool,’ that is of wise.[107] When ‘not’ comes into use it is apt to be put in a wrong place, as when the little girl M. said, ‘No Babba look’ (_i.e._, ‘Babba will not look’), and ‘Mr. Dill not did tum’ for ‘Mr. Gill did not come’.[108] ----- Footnote 107: _Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, 1879-80, p. 391 ff. Footnote 108: It may be added that this child regularly used ‘not’ or ‘n’t’ as a negating or cancelling sign for the whole sentence, saying, for example, ‘Babba mus’n’t go in,’ for ‘Babba may stay out’. -----