The Mind of the Child Part 27

Gross.m.u.tter Kuk Zucker Karl Grete (grandmother) (sugar) {_tosutte_ _o-tute_ _zucke_ _all_ _ete_ S. {_ab.u.t.te_ {_os.m.u.tte_

P. {_a-mama_ _kuk_ _ucka_ _kara_ _dete_ {_e-mama_

Sigismund noticed the following names of animals (in imitation of words given to the children): _ba_, _put_, _gikgak_, _wakwak_, _huhu_, _ihz_ (Hinz). I did not find these with my child. Sigismund likewise observed _baie-baie_ for Wiege (cradle), which my child was not acquainted with; _papa_ for verborgen (hidden); _eichonten_ for Eichhornchen (squirrel); _apften_ for apfelchen (little apple); _madsen_ and _madis_ for Madchen (girl); _atatt_ for Bernhard; _hundis_ for Hundchen, the Thuringian form of Hundchen (little dog); _pot_ for Topf (pot); _dot_ for dort (yonder).

On the other hand, both children used _wehweh_ for Schmerz (pain); _caput_ for zerbrochen (broken to pieces); _schoos_, _sooss_ for "auf den Schooss mocht ich" (I want to get up in the lap); _auf_ for "hinauf mochte ich gehoben werden" (I want to be taken up); _toich_ for Storch (stork); _tul_ for Stuhl (chair). A third child in my presence called his grandmother _mama-mama_, i. e., twice-mamma, in distinction from the mother. This, however, does not necessarily imply a gift for invention, as the expression "Mamma's Mamma" may have been used of the grandmother in speaking to the child.

Other children of the same age do very much the same. The boy D, though he repeated cleverly what was said, was not good at naming objects when he was expected to do this of himself. He would say, e. g., _pilla_ for Spiegel (mirror). At this same period (twenty-five months) he could not yet give the softened or liquid sound of consonants (mouilliren). He said _n_ and _i_ and _a_ very plainly, and also _i-a_, but not _nja_, and not once "ja"; but, on the contrary, always turned away angrily when his father or I, or others, required it of him. But as late as the twenty-eighth month echolalia was present in the highest degree in this very vigorous and intelligent child, for he would at times repeat mechanically the last word of every sentence spoken in his hearing, and even a single word, e. g., when some one asked "Warum?" (why) he likewise said _warum_ without answering the question, and he continued to do it for days again and again in a vacant way, with and without the tone of interrogation (which he did not understand). From this we see again plainly that the imitation of sounds is independent of the understanding of them, but is dependent on the functions of articulation.

These functions are discussed by themselves in the work of Prof. Fritz Schultze, of Dresden, "Die Sprache des Kindes" ("The Language of the Child," Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the "principle of the least effort." He thinks the child begins with the sounds that are made with the least physiological effort, and proceeds gradually to the more difficult sounds, i. e., those which require more "labor of nerve and muscle." This "law" is nothing else than the "loi du moindre effort" which is to be traced back to Maupertuis, and which was long ago applied to the beginnings of articulation in children: e. g., by Buffon in 1749 ("Oeuvres completes," Paris, 1844, iv, pp. 68, 69), and, in spite of Littre, again quite recently by B. Perez[F] ("Les trois premieres Annees de l'Enfant," Paris, 1878, pp. 228-230, _seq._) But this supposed "law" is opposed by many facts which have been presented in this chapter and the preceding one. The impossibility of determining the degree of "physiological effort" required for each separate sound in the child, moreover, is well known. Besides, every sound may be produced with very unequal expenditure of force; but the facts referred to are enough for refutation of the theory. According to Schultze, e. g., the vowels ought, in the process of development of the child's speech, to appear in the following order, separated in time by long intervals: 1.

a; 2. A; 3. U; 4. O; 5. E; 6. I; 7. o; 8. u. It is correct that _a_ is one of the vowels that may be first plainly distinguished; but neither is it the first vowel audible--on the contrary, the first audible vowel is indistinct, and imperfectly articulated vowels are the first--nor can we admit that _a_ is produced with less of effort than is _a_. The reverse is the case. Further, _o_ is said to present "enormous difficulties," and hence has the place next to the last; but I have often heard the _o_, short and long, perfectly pure in the second month, long before the _i_, and that not in my child alone. From the observations upon the latter, the order of succession appears to be the following: Indeterminate vowels, _u_, _a_, _a_, _o_, _o_, _ai_, _ao_, _i_, _e_, _u_, _oeu_ (French sound in coeur), _au_, _oi_. Thus, for the above eight vowels, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, the order 3, 1, 2, 7, 4, 6, 5, 8, so that only _i_ and _u_ keep their place. But other children give a varying order, and these differences in the order of succession of vowels as well as of consonants will certainly not be referred to the "influence of heredity." Two factors of quite another sort are, on the contrary, to be taken into account here in the case of every normal child without exception, apart from the unavoidable errors in every a.s.signed order growing out of incomplete observation. In the earliest period and when the babbling monologues begin, the cavity of the mouth takes on an infinitely manifold variety of forms--the lips, tongue, lower jaw, larynx, are moved, and in a greater variety of ways than ever afterward. At the same time there is expiration, often loud expiration, and thus originates entirely at random sometimes one sound, sometimes another. The child _hears_ sounds and tones new to him, hears his own voice, takes pleasure in it, and delights in making sounds, as he does in moving his limbs in the bath. It is natural that he should find more pleasure in some sounds, in others less. The first are more frequently made by him on account of the motor memories that are a.s.sociated with the acoustic memories, and an observer does not hear the others at all if he observes the child only from time to time. In fact, however, almost all simple sounds, even the most difficult, are formed in purity before they are used in speaking in the first eight months--most frequently those that give the child pleasure, that satisfy his desires, or lessen his discomfort. It is not to be forgotten that even the _a_, which requires effort on account of the drawing back and spreading out of the tongue, diminishes discomfort. The fretful babe feels better when he cries _u-a_ than when he keeps silent. The second factor is determined by the surroundings of the child. Those sounds which the child distinctly hears he will be able to imitate correctly sooner than he will other sounds: but he will be in condition to hear most correctly, first of all, the sounds that are most frequent, just because these most frequently excite the auditory nerve and its tract in the brain; secondly, among these sounds that are acoustically most sharply defined, viz., first the vowels, then the resonants (m, n, ng); last, the compound "friction-sounds" (fl, schl). But it is only in part that the surroundings determine this order of succession for the sounds.

Another thing that partly determines and modifies this order is the child's own unwearied practice in forming consonant-sounds. He hears his own voice now better than he did at an earlier period when he was forming vowels only. He most easily retains and repeats, among the infinitely manifold consonants that are produced by loud expiration, those which have been distinctly heard by him. This is owing to the a.s.sociation of the motor and the acoustic memory-image in the brain.

These are the most frequent in his speech. Not until later does the mechanical difficulty of articulation exert an influence, and this comes in at the learning of the compound sounds. Hence there can not be any chronological order of succession of sounds that holds good universally in the language of the child, because each language has a different order in regard to the frequency of appearance of the sounds; but heredity can have no influence here, because every child of average gifts, though it may hear from its birth a language unknown to its ancestors, if it hears no other, yet learns to speak this language perfectly. What is hereditary is the great plasticity of the entire apparatus of speech, the voice, and with it a number of sounds that are not acquired, as _m_. An essential reason for the defective formation of sounds in children born deaf is the fact that they do not hear their own voice. This defect may also be hereditary.

The treatise of F. Schultze contains, besides, many good remarks upon the _technique_ of the language of the child, but, as they are of inferior psychogenetic interest, they need not be particularly mentioned here. Others of them are only partially confirmed by the observations, as is shown by a comparison with what follows.

Gustav Lindner ("Twelfth Annual Report of the Lehrer-seminars at Zschopau," 1882, p. 13) heard from his daughter, in her ninth week, _arra_ or _arra_, which was uttered for months. Also _ackn_ appeared early. The principle of the least effort Lindner finds to be almost absolutely refuted by his observations. He rightly remarks that the frequent repet.i.tions of the same groups of sounds, in the babbling monologues, are due in part to a kind of pleasure in success, such as urges adults also to repeat their successful efforts. Thus his child used to imitate the reading of the newspaper (in the second half-year) by _degattegattegatte_. In the eleventh and twelfth months the following were utterances of hers in repeating words heard: _omama_, _oia_ (Rosa), _batta_ (Bertha), _achard_ (Richard), _wiwi_ (Friedchen), _agga_ (Martha), _olla olla_ (Olga, her own name). Milch (milk) she called _mimi_, Stuhl (chair) _tuhl_, Laterne (lantern), _katonne_, the whistle of an engine in a neighboring factory, _wuh_ (prolonged, onomatopoetic), Paul, _gouch_, danke (thank you), _dagn_ or _dagni_, Baum (tree), _maum_. Another child subst.i.tuted _u_ for _i_ and _e_, saying _hund_ for "Kind," and _uluwant_ for "Elephant"; thus, _ein fomme hund la.s.s wade much_ for "ein frommes Kind la.s.s werden mich" (let me become a pious child). Lindner's child, however, called "werden" not _wade_ but _wegen_; and "turnen" she called _tung_, "blau" _balau_. At the end of the second year no sound in the German language presented difficulties to the child. Her p.r.o.nunciation was, however, still incorrect, for the correct p.r.o.nunciation of the separate sounds does not by any means carry with it the p.r.o.nunciation of them in their combinations. This remark of Lindner's is directly to the point, and is also confirmed, as I find, by the first attempts of the child of four years to read a word after having learned the separate letters. The learning of the correct p.r.o.nunciation is also delayed by the child's preference of his original incorrect p.r.o.nunciation, to which he is accustomed, and which is encouraged by imitations of it on the part of his relatives. Lindner ill.u.s.trates this by good examples. His child continued to say _mimela_ after "Kamilla" was easy for him. Not till the family stopped saying it did "Kamilla" take its place. At the age of three and a half years the child still said _gebhalten_ for "behalten" and _vervloren_ for "verloren," as well as _gebhute_ for "behute." "Grosspapa" was called successively _opapa_, _gropapa_, _grosspapa_. Grossmama had a corresponding development. "Fleisch" (meat) was first called _jeich_, then _leisch_; "Kartoffeln" (potatoes) _kaffom_, then _kaftoffeln_; "Zschopau" _sopau_, _schodau_, _tschopau_; "Sparbuchse" (savings-box) _bab.i.+.c.hse_, _spab.i.+.c.hse_, _spa.s.sbuchse_, _sparzbuchse_; "Haring"

(herring, also gold-fish) _hanging_. A sound out of the second syllable goes into the first. The first question, _isn das?_ from "Was ist denn das?" (what is that, pray?) was noticed in the twentieth month; the interrogative word _was?_ (what) in the twenty-second month. Wo? (where) and Wohin? (whither) had the same meaning (that of the French _ou?_), and this as late as in the fourth year. The word "Ich" (I) made its appearance in the thirtieth month. As to verbs, it is to be mentioned that, with the child at two years of age, before the use of the tenses there came the special word denoting activity in general: thus he said, when looking at a head of Christ by Guido Reni, _thut beten_, instead of "betet" ("does pray," instead of "prays"). The verb "sein" (be) was very much distorted: _Warum warst du nicht fleissig gebist?_ (gebist for gewesen) (why have you not been industrious?). (Cf., pp. 172, 177.) He inflected _bin_, _binst_ (for bist), _bint_ (ist), _binn_ (sind), _bint_ (sind and seid), _binn_ (sind). Further, _wir isn_ (wir sind, we are), and _nun sei ich ruhig_ (sei for bin) (now I am quiet), and _ich habe nicht ruhig geseit_ (_habe_ for "bin" and _geseit_ for "gewesen") (I have not been quiet), are worthy of note, because they show how strong an influence in the formation of words during the transition period is exerted by the forms most frequently heard--here the imperative. The child used first of all the imperative; last the subjunctive. The superlative and comparative were not used by this child until the fourth year.

The observations of Lindner (edited anew in the periodical "Kosmos" for 1882) are among the best we have.

In the case of four brothers and sisters, whose mother, Frau Dr.

Friedemann, of Berlin, has most kindly placed at my disposal trustworthy observations concerning them, the first articulate sounds heard were _ara_, _haga_, _ache_, and a deep guttural, rattling or snarling sound (Schnarren); but the last was heard from only one of the children.

The above syllables contain three consonants (_r_, _h_, _ch_) that are declared by many, wrongly, to be very late in their appearance. These children in their first attempts at speaking often left out the first consonant of a word p.r.o.nounced for them, or else subst.i.tuted for it the one last heard, as if their memory were not equal to the retaining of the sounds heard first: e. g., in the fifteenth month they would say _t[)e]_, _t_ for _Hut_ (hat), _Lale_ for _Rosalie_; in the twenty-fourth, _kanke_ for _danke_ (thank you), _kecke_ for _Decke_ (covering), _kucker_ for _Zucker_ (sugar), _huch_, _huche_ for _Schuh_, _Schuhe_ (shoe, shoes), fifteenth month. In the last two cases comes in, to explain the omission, also the mechanical difficulty of the _Z_ and _Sch_. The oldest of these children, a girl, when a year old, used to say, when she refused anything, _ateta_, with a shake of the head. She knew her own image in the gla.s.s, and pointed at it, saying _tate_ (for _Kate_). In the following table the Roman figures stand for the month; F_{1}, F_{2}, F_{3}, F_{4}, for the four children in the order of their ages. No further explanation will be needed:

VIII. _papa_ distinctly (F_{1}); _dada_, _da_, _deda_, first syllables (F_{4}); _derta_ for _Bertha_ (F_{1}).

X. _dada_, name for all possible objects (F_{2}); _papa_ (F_{3}); _ada_, _mama_, _detta_ (F_{4}).

XII. _puppe_ (doll) correctly; _tate_ for _Kate_ (F_{1}); _ida_, _papa_, _tata_ for _Tante_ (aunt); _tate_ (F_{4}).

XIII. _mama_, _detta_ for _Bertha_; _wauwau_ (F_{2}); _lala_ (F_{4}).

XIV. _ba_ for _baden_ (bathe) (F_{2}).

XV. _hia_ for _Ida_; _ate_ for _artig_ (well-behaved); _da_ for _danke_; _bappen_ for _essen_ (eat); _piep_; _ja_, _nein_ (yes, no) correctly (F_{1}).

XVI. _ei_ (egg) correctly; _feisch_ for _Fleisch_ (meat); _waffer_ for _Wa.s.ser_ (water); _wuffe_ for _Suppe_ (F_{1}); _tatte_ for _Tante_; _t.i.ttak_; _Hut_ (F_{3}).

XIX. _at_ for _Katze_ (cat); _duh_ for _Kuh_ (cow); _w[=a]n_ for _Schwan_ (swan); _nine_ for _Kaninchen_ (rabbit); _betta_ for _Blatter_ (leaves); _b.u.t.ta_ for _b.u.t.terblume_ (b.u.t.tercup); _fiedemann_ for _Friedemann_; _tati_ for _Kati_ (F_{1}); _gad_ for _gerade_ (straight); _k.u.mm_ for _krumm_ (crooked) (F_{3}).

XX. _fidat_ for _Zwieback_ (biscuit); _tierdatten_ for _Thiergarten_ (zoological garden); _waden_ for _wagen_ (carriage); _nahnaden_ for _Nahnadel_ (needle); _wewette_ for _serviette_ (napkin); _teid_ for Kleid (dress); _weife_ for Seife (soap); _famm_ for _Schwamm_ (sponge); _tonnat_ for _Konrad_; _potne_ for _Portemonnaie_; _hauf_ for _herauf_ (up here); _hunta_ for _herunter_ (down here); _hiba papa_ for _lieber_ (dear) _papa_ (F_{1}); _tu_ for _Thur_ (door); _bau_ for _bauen_ (build); _teta_ for _Kate_; _manna_ for _Amanda; ta_ for _guten Tag_ (good-day); _ku_ for _Kugel_ (ball) (F_{2}); _appudich_ for _Apfelmuss_ (apple-sauce); _mich_ for _Milch_ (milk); _ule pomm_ for _Ulrich komm_ (Ulrich come); _ku_ for _Kuchen_ (cake); _lilte_ for _Mathilde_ (F_{3}).

XXI. _teine_ for _Steine_ (stones); _bimelein_ for _Blumelein_ (little flowers); _mamase_ for _Mamachen_ (little mama); _tettern_ for _klettern_ (climb); _Papa weint nis_ (Papa doesn't cry), first sentence (F_{1}); _Mamase, Tate artig--Tuss_ (means _Mamachen, Kate ist wieder artig, gib ihr einen Kuss_) (Mamma, darling, Katy is good again, give her a kiss) (F_{1}); _Amanda's Hut_, _Mamases Hirm_ (for Schirm) (Amanda's hat, mamma's umbrella), first use of the genitive case (F_{1}); _Mein Buch_ (my book); _dein Ball_ (thy ball) (F_{1}); _das?_ for _was ist das?_ (what is that?) in the tone of interrogation (F_{1}) _dida_ for _Ida_; _lala_ for _Rosalie_; _fadi_ for _Fahne_ (flag); _buda_ for _Bruderchen_ (little brother); _hu-e_ for _Schuhe_ (shoes); _mai maich_, for _meine Milch_ (my milk) (F_{2}).

XXII. _kusch_ for _Kuss_ (kiss); _sch_ generally used instead of _s_ for months (F_{3}).

XXIII. _koka_ for _Cacao_; _batt_ for _Bett_ (bed); _emmu_ for _h.e.l.lmuth_ (light-heartedness); _nanna mommom_ (Bon-bon); _papa_, _appel_ for _Papa_, _bitte einen Apfel_ (Papa, please, an apple) (F_{2}); _petscher_ for _Schwester_ (sister); _till_ for _still_; _bils_ for _Milch_; _hiba vata_ for _lieber Vater_ (dear father) (F_{3}).

XXIV. _pija eine_ for _eine Fliege_ (a fly); _pipik_ for _Musik_.

Sentences begin to be formed (F_{3}).

XXV. _pater_ for _Vater_ (father); _appelsine_ for _Apfelsine_ (orange) (F_{2}).

All these observations confirm my results in regard to articulation, viz., that in very many cases the more difficult sounds, i. e., those that require a more complicated muscular action, are either omitted or have their places supplied by others; but this rule does not by any means hold good universally: e. g., the sound preferred by F_{3}, _sch_, is more difficult than _s_, and my child very often failed to produce it as late as the first half of the fourth year.

In the twenty-second month, in the case of the intelligent little girl F_{1}, numbering began suddenly. She took small stones from a table in the garden, one after another, and counted them distinctly up to the ninth. The persons present could not explain this surprising performance (for the child had not learned to count) until it was discovered that on the previous day some one had counted the stairs for the child in going up. My child did not begin to count till the twenty-ninth month, and, indeed, although he knew the numbers (their names, not their meaning), he counted only by adding one to one (cf. above, p. 172). Sigismund's boy, long before he formed sentences, on seeing two hors.e.m.e.n, one following the other at a short interval, said, _eite_ (for Reiter)!

_noch eins!_ This proves the activity of the faculty of numbering.

The boy F_{3}, at the age of two and two thirds years, still said _schank_ for _Schrank_ and _nopf_ for _Knopf_, and, on being told to say _Sch-r-ank_ plainly, he said _rrr-schank_. This child from the thirty-first month on made much use of the interrogative words.

_Warum?_ _weshalb?_ he asked at every opportunity; very often, too, _was?_ _wer?_ _wo?_ (Why? wherefore? what? who? where?); sometimes _was?_ four or five times when he had been spoken to. When the meaning of what had been said was made plain, then the child stopped asking questions.

The little girl F_{4}, in her thirteenth month, always says, when she sees a clock, _didda_ (for "tick-tack," which has been said to her), and imitates with her finger the movement of the pendulum. It was noticed of this child that, when not yet five months old, she would accompany a song, sung for her by her mother, with a continuous, drawling _ah-ah-ah_; but, as soon as the mother stopped, the child became silent also. The experiment was one day (the one hundred and forty-fifth of the child's life) repeated nine times, with the same result.

I have myself repeatedly observed that babes in the fourth month respond to words spoken in a forcible, pleasant manner with sounds indeterminate often, with _o-[)e]_ and other vowels. There is no imitation in this, but a reaction that is possible only through partic.i.p.ation of the cerebrum, as in the case of the joyous sounds at music at an earlier period.

The date at which the words heard from members of the family are for the first time clearly imitated, and the time when the words of the mother-tongue are first used independently, depends, undoubtedly, with children in sound condition, chiefly upon the extent to which people occupy themselves with the children. According to Heinr. Feldmann (_De statu normali functionum corporis humani_. Inaugural dissertation, Bonn, 1833, p. 3), thirty-three children spoke for the first time (_prima verba fecerunt_) as follows:

14 15 16 17 18 19 Month.

1 8 19 3 1 1 Children.

Of these there could walk alone

8 9 10 11 12 Month.

--^-- ---^--- 3 24 6 Children.

According to this, it is generally the case (the author presumably observed Rhenish children) that the first independent step is taken in walking several months earlier than the first word is spoken. But the statement of Heyfelder is not correct, that the average time at which sound children learn to walk ("laufen lernen") comes almost exactly at the completion of the twelfth month. The greater part of them are said by him to begin to walk a few days before or after the 365th day. R.

Demme observed that the greater part began to walk between the twelfth and eighteenth months, and my inquiries yield a similar result.

Sigismund's boy could run before he imitated words and gestures, and he did not yet form a sentence when he had more than sixty words at his command. Of two sisters, the elder could not creep in her thirteenth month, could walk alone for the first time in the fifteenth month, step over a threshold alone in the eighteenth, jump down alone from a threshold in the nineteenth, run nimbly in the twentieth; the younger, on the other hand, could creep alone cleverly at the beginning of the tenth month, even over thresholds, could take the first unsteady steps alone in the thirteenth, and stride securely over the threshold alone in the fifteenth. In spite of this considerable start the younger child was not, by a great deal, so far advanced in articulation, in repeating words after others, and in the use of words, in her fifteenth month, as the elder was in her fifteenth. The latter spoke before she walked, the former ran before she spoke (Frau von Strumpell). My child could imitate gestures (beckoning, clinching the fist, nodding the head) and single syllables (_heiss_), before he could walk, and did not learn to speak till after that; whereas the child observed by Wyma could stand firmly at nine months, and walk soon after, and he spoke at the same age.

Inasmuch as in such statistical materials the important thing is to know what is meant by "speaking for the first time," whether it be saying _mama_, or imitating, or using correctly a word of the language that is to be spoken later, or forming a sentence of more than one word--and yet on these points data are lacking--we can not regard the laborious inquiries and collections as of much value. Children in sound condition walk for the most part before they speak, and understand what is said long before they walk. A healthy boy, born on the 13th of July, 1873, ran alone for the first time on the 1st of November, 1874, and formed his first sentence, _hia muta ji_ ("Marie! die Mutter ist ausgegangen,"

_ji_ = adieu) (Mary, mother has gone out), on the 21st of November, 1875, thus a full year later (Schulte).

More important, psychogenetically, are observations concerning the forming of new words with a definite meaning before learning to speak--words not to be considered as mutilations, imperfectly imitated or onomatopoetic forms (these, too, would be imitations), or as original primitive interjections. In spite of observations and inquiries directed especially to this point, I have not been able to make sure that any inventions of that sort are made before there has taken place, through the medium of the child's relatives, the first a.s.sociation of ideas with articulate sounds and syllables. There is no reason for supposing them to be made by children. According to the foregoing data, they are not thus made. All the instances of word-inventions of a little boy, communicated by Prof. S. S. Haldemann, of the University at Philadelphia, in his "Note on the Invention of Words" ("Proceedings of the American Philological a.s.sociation," July 14, 1880) are, like those noted by Taine, by Holden (see below), by myself, and others, onomatopoetic (imitative, pp. 160, 91). He called a cow _m_, a bell _tin-tin_ (Holden's boy called a church-bell _ling-dong-mang_ [communicated in correspondence]), a locomotive _tshu, tshu,_ the noise made by throwing objects into the water _boom_, and he extended this word to mean throw, strike, fall, spill, without reference to the sound.

But the point of departure here, also, was the sound. In consideration of the fact that a sound formed in imitation of it, that is, a repet.i.tion of the tympanic vibrations by means of the vibrations of the vocal cords, is employed as a _word_ for a phenomenon a.s.sociated with the sound--that this is done by means of the faculty of generalization belonging to children that are intelligent but as yet without speech--it is perfectly allowable, notwithstanding the scruples and objections of even a Max Muller, to look for the origin of language in the imitation of sounds and the repet.i.tion of our own inborn vocal sounds, and so in an imitation. For the power of forming concepts must have manifested itself in the primitive man, as is actually the case in the infant, by movements of many sorts before articulate language existed. The question is, not whether the roots of language originated onomatopoetically or interjectionally, but simply whether they originated through imitation or not. For interjections, all of them, could in no way come to be joined together so as to be means of mutual understanding, i. e., words, unless one person imitated those of another. Now if the alalic child be tested as to whether he forms new words in any other way than by imitation and transformation of what he imitates, i. e., whether he forms them solely of his own ability, be it by the combination of impulsive sounds of his own or of sounds accidentally arising in loud expiration, we find no sure case of it. Sound combinations, syllables--and those not in the least imitated--there are in abundance, but that even a single one is, without the intervention of the persons about the child, constantly a.s.sociated with one and the same idea (before other ideas have received their verbal designation--likewise by means of the members of the family--and have been made intelligible to the child), can not be shown to be probable. My observations concerning the word _atta_ (p. 122 _et al._) would tend in that direction, were it not that the _atta_, uttered in the beginning without meaning, had first got the meaning of "away," through the fact that _atta_ was once said by somebody at going away.

So long as proof is wanting, we can not believe that each individual child discovers anew the fundamental fact of the expression of ideas by movements of the tongue; but we have to admit that he has inherited the faculty for such expression, and simply manifests it when he finds occasion for imitations.

The first person that has attempted to fix the _number_ of all the words used by the child, independently, before the beginning of the third year of life (and these only), is an astronomer, E. S. Holden, director of the Observatory of the University at Madison, Wisconsin. His results in the case of three children have been recently published (in the "Transactions of the American Philological a.s.sociation," 1887, pp.

58-68).

Holden found, by help of Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary," his own vocabulary to consist of 33,456 words, with a probable error of one per cent. Allowing a probable error of two per cent, his vocabulary would be comprised between the limits of 34,125 words and 32,787 words. A vocabulary of 25,000 words and over is, according to the researches of himself and his friends, by no means an unusual one for grown persons of average intelligence and education.

Holden now determined in the most careful manner the words actually used by two children during the twenty-fourth month of their lives. A friend in England ascertained the same for a third child. All doubtful words were rigidly excluded. For example, words from nursery rhymes were excluded, unless they were independently and separately used in the same way with words of daily and common use. In the first two cases the words so excluded are above 500 in number. Again, the names of objects represented in pictures were not included unless they were often spontaneously used by the children. The lists of words are presented in the order of their initial letters, because the ease or difficulty of p.r.o.nouncing a word, the author is convinced, largely determines its early or late adoption. In this I can not fully agree with him, on the ground of my own experience (particularly since I have myself been teaching my child English, in his fourth year; he learns the language easily). It is not correct that the p.r.o.nunciation rather than the meaning makes the learning of a word difficult. Thus, in all three of Holden's cases, the words that have the least easy initial (s) predominate; the child, however, avoided them and subst.i.tuted easy ones.

Holden makes no mention of this; and in his list of all the words used he puts together, strangely, under one and the same letter, without regard to their sound-(phonic) value, vocables that begin with entirely different sounds. Thus, e. g., under _c_ are found _corner_ (_k_), _chair_ (tsch), _cellar_ (_s_); under _k_, actually _knee_ (_n_) and _keep_ (_k_), and, under _s_, words that begin with the same _s_-sound as in _cellar_, e. g., _soap_, and also words beginning with the _sch_-sound, _sugar_, and with _st_, _sw_, _sm_, and many others. As the words of the three children are grouped, not according to the _sounds_ with which they begin, but according to their initial _letters_, into twenty-six cla.s.ses, the author's conclusions can not be admitted. The words must first all be arranged according to their initial _sounds_.

When this task is accomplished, which brings _no_ and _know_, e. g., into one cla.s.s, _wrap_ and _rag_ into a second--whereas they were put in four different cla.s.ses--then we find by no means the same order of succession that Holden gives. The author wrote to me, however, in 1882, that his oldest child _understood_ at least 1,000 words more than those enumerated here, i. e., than those published by him, and that with both children facility of p.r.o.nunciation had more influence in regard to the use of words than did the ease with which the words could be understood; this, however, does not plainly follow from the printed statements before me, as he admits. When the first-born child was captivated by a new word, she was accustomed to practice it by herself, alone, and then to come and employ it with a certain pride. The second child did so, too, only in a less striking manner. The boy, on the contrary, who was four years old in December, 1881, and who had no ear for music and less pride than his sisters, did not do as they did.

Further, the statements of the number of all the nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs used by a child of two years are of interest, although they present several errors: e. g., _supper_ makes its appearance twice in the case of the same child under _s_, and _enough_ figures as an adjective. For the three girls, in their twenty-fourth month, the results were: