n
thinks, say, father my, servants many, bread enough, part give away
can--I none--starve, die. I decide: Father I go to, say I bad, God
disobey, you disobey--name my hereafter _son_, no--I unworthy. You
me work give servant like. So son begin go. Father far look: son see,
pity, run, meet, embrace. Son father say, I bad, you disobey, God
disobey--name my hereafter _son_, no--I unworthy. But father servants
call, command robe best bring, son put on, ring finger put on, shoes
feet put on, calf fat bring, kill. We all eat, merry. Why? Son this my
formerly dead, now alive: formerly lost, now found: rejoice."

It may be remarked, not only from this example, but from general
study, that the verb "to be" as a copula or predicant does not have
any place in sign language. It is shown, however, among deaf-mutes as
an assertion of presence or existence by a sign of stretching the arms
and hands forward and then adding the sign of affirmation. _Time_ as
referred to in the conjunctions _when_ and _then_ is not gestured.
Instead of the form, "When I have had a sleep I will go to the river,"
or "After sleeping I will go to the river," both deaf-mutes and
Indians would express the intention by "Sleep done, I river go."
Though time present, past, and future is readily expressed in signs
(see page 366), it is done once for all in the connection to which
it belongs, and once established is not repeated by any subsequent
intimation, as is commonly the case in oral speech. Inversion, by
which the object is placed before the action, is a striking feature
of the language of deaf-mutes, and it appears to follow the natural
method by which objects and actions enter into the mental conception.
In striking a rock the natural conception is not first of the abstract
idea of striking or of sending a stroke into vacancy, seeing nothing
and having no intention of striking anything in particular, when
suddenly a rock rises up to the mental vision and receives the blow;
the order is that the man sees the rock, has the intention to strike
it, and does so; therefore he gestures, "I rock strike." For further
illustration of this subject, a deaf-mute boy, giving in signs
the compound action of a man shooting a bird from a tree, first
represented the tree, then the bird as alighting upon it, then a
hunter coming toward and looking at it, taking aim with a gun, then
the report of the latter and the falling and the dying gasps of the
bird. These are undoubted