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Aboriginal Sign Languages of The Americas and Australia

Volume 1; North America Classic Comparative Perspectives

  • Book
  • © 1978

Overview

Editors:
  1. D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok

    1. Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

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  2. Thomas A. Sebeok

    1. Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

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Table of contents (3 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction to the Study of Sign Language among the North American Indians as Illustrating the Gesture Speech of Mankind

    • Garrick Mallery
    Pages 1-76

  3. A Collection of Gesture-Signs and Signals of the North American Indians with Some Comparisons

    • Garrick Mallery
    Pages 77-406

  4. The Gesture Speech of Man

    • Garrick Mallery
    Pages 407-437

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 439-442
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Keywords

About this book

1. THE SEMIOTIC CHARACTER OF ABORIGINAL SIGN LANGUAGES In our culture, language, especially in its spoken manifestation, is the much vaunted hallmark of humanity, the diagnostic trait of man that has made possible the creation of a civilization unknown to any other terrestrial organism. Through our inheritance of a /aculte du langage, culture is in a sense bred inta man. And yet, language is viewed as a force wh ich can destroy us through its potential for objectification and classification. According to popular mythology, the naming of the animals of Eden, while giving Adam and Eve a certain power over nature, also destroyed the prelinguistic harmony between them and the rest of the natural world and contributed to their eventual expulsion from paradise. Later, the post-Babel development of diverse language families isolated man from man as weIl as from nature (Steiner 1975). Language, in other words, as the central force animating human culture, is both our salvation and damnation. Our constant war with words (Shands 1971) is waged on both internal and external battlegrounds. This culturally determined ambivalence toward language is particularly appar­ ent when we encounter humans or hominoid animals who, for one reason or another, must rely upon gestural forms of communication.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

    D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok, Thomas A. Sebeok

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Aboriginal Sign Languages of The Americas and Australia

  • Book Subtitle: Volume 1; North America Classic Comparative Perspectives

  • Editors: D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok, Thomas A. Sebeok

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2409-6

  • Publisher: Springer New York, NY

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 1978

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4684-2411-9Published: 25 November 2012

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4684-2409-6Published: 09 March 2013

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXXII, 442

  • Number of Illustrations: 33 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Regional and Cultural Studies, Geology

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