Chapter XII: George Sand’s Childhood, 489 (6)

Of the child’s belief in God’s goodness it is needless to say much. For these little worshippers he is emphatically the friend in need who can help them out of their difficulties in a hundred ways. Our small zoologist thanked God for making “the sea, the holes with crabs in them, and the trees, the fields, and the flowers,” and regretted that he did not follow up the making of the animals we eat by doing the cooking also. As their prayers show he is ever ready to make nice presents, from a fine day to a toy-gun, and will do them any kindness if only they ask prettily. Happy the reign of this untroubled optimism. For many children, alas, it is all too short, the colour of their life making them lose faith in all kindness, and think of God as cross and even as cruel.

One of the real difficulties of theology for the child’s intelligence is the doctrine of God’s eternity. Puzzled at first with the fact of his own beginning, he comes soon to be troubled with the idea of God’s having had no beginning. C. showed a common trend of childish thought in asking what God was like in his younger days. The question, “Who made God?” seems to be one to which all inquiring young minds are led at a certain stage of child-thought. The metaphysical impulse of the child to follow back the chain of events _ad infinitum_ finds the ever-existent unchanging God very much in the way. He wants to get behind this “always was” of God’s existence, just as at an earlier stage of his development he wanted to get behind the barrier of the blue hills. This is quaintly illustrated in the reasoning of a child observed by M. Egger. Having learnt from his mother that before the world there was only God the Creator, he asked: “And before God?” The mother having replied, “Nothing,” he at once interpreted her answer by saying: “No; there must have been the place (_i.e._, the empty space) where God is”. So determined is the little mind to get back to the ‘before,’ and to find something, if only a prepared place.

Other mysteries of which the child comes to hear find their characteristic solution in the busy little brain. A friend tells me that when a child he was much puzzled by the doctrine of the Trinity. He happened to be an only child, and so he was led to put a meaning into it by assimilating it to the family group, in which the Holy Ghost became the mother.

I have tried to show that children seek to bring meaning, and a consistent meaning, into the jumble of communications about the unseen world to which they are apt to be treated. I agree with Miss Shinn that children about three and four are not disposed to theologise, and are for the most part simply confused by the accounts of God which they receive. Many of the less bright of these small minds may remain untroubled by the incongruities lurking in the mixture of ideas, half mythological or poetical, half theological, which is thus introduced. Such children are no worse than many adults, who have a wonderful power of entertaining contradictory ideas by keeping them safely apart in separate chambers of their brain. The intelligent thoughtful child on the other hand tries at least to reconcile and to combine in an intelligible whole. His mind has not, like that of so many adults, become habituated to the water-tight compartment arrangement, in which there is no possibility of a leakage of ideas from one group into another. Hence his puzzlings, his questionings, his brave attempts to reduce the chaos to order. I think it is about time to ask whether parents are doing wisely in thus adding to the perplexing problems of early days.

V.
THE LITTLE LINGUIST.

_Prelinguistic Babblings._

No part of the life of a child appeals to us more powerfully perhaps than the first use of our language. The small person’s first efforts in linguistics win us by a certain graciousness, by the friendly impulse they disclose to get mentally near us, to enter into the full fruition of human intercourse. The difficulties, too, which we manage to lay upon the young learner of our tongue, and the way in which he grapples with these, lend a peculiar interest, half pathetic, half humorous, to this field of infantile activity. To the scientific observer of infancy, moreover, the noting of the stages in the acquisition of speech is of the first importance. Language is sound moulded into definite forms and so made vehicular of ideas; and we may best watch the unfoldings of childish thought by attending to the way in which the word-sculptor takes the plastic sound-material and works it into its picturesque variety of shapes.

A special biological and anthropological interest attaches to the child’s first essays in the use of words. Language is that which most obviously marks off human from animal intelligence. One of the most interesting problems in the science of man’s origin and early development is how he first acquired the power of using language-signs. If we proceed on the biological principle that the development of the individual represents in its main stages that of the race, we may expect to find through the study of children’s use of language hints as to how our race came by the invaluable endowment. How far it is reasonable to expect from a study of nursery linguistics a complete explanation of the process by which man became speechful, _homo articulans_, will appear later on. But an examination of these linguistics ought surely to be of some suggestive value here.

While there is this peculiar scientific interest in the first manifestations of the speech-faculty in the child, they are of a kind to lend themselves particularly well to a methodic and exact observation. Articulate sounds are sensible objects having well-defined characters which may be accurately noted and described where the requisite fineness of ear and quickness of perception are present. The difficulties are no doubt great here: but they are precisely the difficulties to sharpen the appetite of the true naturalist. Hence we need not wonder that early articulation fills a large place in the naturalist’s observation of infant life. Preyer, for example, devotes one of the three sections of his well-known monograph to this subject, and gives us a careful and elaborate account of the progress of articulation and of speech up to the end of the period dealt with (first three years).

Since these studies are especially concerned with the characteristics of the child after language has been acquired I shall not enter into the history of his rudimentary speech at any great length. At the same time, since language is a realm of activity in which the child betrays valuable characteristics long after the third year, it deserves a special study in this volume.

As everybody knows, long before the child begins to speak in the conventional sense he produces sounds. These are at first cries and wanting in the definiteness of true articulate sounds. Such cries are expressive, that is, utterances of changing conditions of feeling, pain and pleasure, and are also instinctive, springing out of certain congenital nervous arrangements by which feeling acts upon the muscular organs. This crying gradually differentiates itself into a rich variety of expressions for hunger, cold, pain, joy and so forth, of which it is safe to say that the majority of nurses and mothers have at best but a very imperfect knowledge.

These cries disclose from the first a germ of articulate sound, _viz._, according to Preyer an approach to the vowel sounds _u_ (oo) and _ä_ (Engl. _a_ in ‘made’). This articulate element becomes better defined and more varied in the later cries, and serves in part to differentiate them one from the other. Thus a difference of shade in the _a_ (in ‘ah’), difficult to describe, has been observed to mark off the cry of pleasure and of pain. Along with this articulate sounds begin to appear in periods of happy contentment under the form of infantile babbling or ‘la-la-ing’. Thus the child will bring out a string of _a_ and other vowel sounds. In this baby-twittering the several vowel sounds of our tongue become better distinguishable, and are strung together in queer ways, as _ai-ā-au-â_. An attempt is made by Preyer and others to give the precise order of the appearance of the several vowel sounds. It is hardly to be expected that observers would agree upon a matter so difficult to seize and to describe; and this is what we find.[60] After allowing, however, for differences in the reading off, it seems probable that there is a considerable diversity in the order of development in the case of different children. This applies still more to the appearance of the consonantal sounds which long before the end of the sixth month become combined with the vowels into syllabic sounds, as _pa_, _ma_, _mam_, and so forth. Thus, though the labials _b_, _p_, _m_, seem to come first in most cases, they may be accompanied, if not preceded, by others, as the back open sound _ch_ (in Scotch ‘loch’), or (according to Preyer and others) by the corresponding voiced sound, the hard _g_. Similarly, sounds as _l_ and _r_, which commonly appear late, are said in some instances to occur quite early.[61] Attempts have been made to show that the order of sounds here corresponds with that of advancing physiological difficulty or amount of muscular effort involved. Yet apart from the fact just touched on, that the order is not uniform, it is very questionable whether the more common order obeys any such simple physiological law.

-----

Footnote 60:

See Preyer, _op. cit._, Cap. 20; _cf._ the account given by De la
Calle, Perez, _First Three Years_, p. 248. Stanley Hall observes that
the first vocalisation of the infant could hardly be classified even
with the help of Bell’s phonic notation or with a phonograph
(_Pedagogical Seminary_, i., p. 132).

-----

Footnote 61:

Preyer’s boy first used consonants in the combinations _tahu_, _gö_,
(_rööö_ = the French _eu_), _op. cit._, p. 366; _cf._ Cap. 21.

-----

This primordial babbling is wonderfully rich and varied. According to Preyer it contains most, if not all the sounds which are afterwards used in speaking, and among these some which cause much difficulty later on. It is thus a wondrous contrivance of nature by which the child is made to rehearse months beforehand for the difficult performances of articulate speech. It is a preliminary trying of the vocal instrument throughout the whole of its register.

Though nurses are apt to fancy that in this pretty babbling the infant is talking to itself there is no reason to think that it amounts even to a rudiment of true speech. To speak is to use a sound intentionally as the sign of an idea. The babbling baby of five months cannot be supposed to be connecting all these stray sounds with ideas, if indeed it can be said to have as yet any definite ideas. The only signification which this primitive articulation can have is emotional. Undoubtedly, as we have seen, it grows out of expressive cries. Even the happy bubblings over of vowel sounds as the child lies on his back and ‘crows,’ may be said to be expressive of his happiness like the movements of arms and legs which accompany it. Yet it would be an exaggeration to suppose that the elaborate phonation is merely expressive, that all the manifold and subtle changes of sound are due to obscure variations of feeling.

The true explanation seems to be that the appearance of this infantile babbling, just like that of the movements of the limbs which accompany it, is the result of changes in the nervous system. As the centres of vocalisation get developed, motor impulses begin to play on the muscles of throat, larynx, and, later on, lips, tongue, etc., and in this way a larger and larger variety of sound and sound-combination is produced. Such phonation is commonly described as impulsive. It is instinctive, that is to say, unlearnt, and due to congenital nervous connexions; and at best it can only be said to express in its totality a mood or relatively permanent state of feeling.

As this impulsive articulation develops it becomes complicated by a distinctly intentional element. The child hears the sounds he produces and falls in love with them. From this moment he begins to go on babbling for the pleasure it brings. We see the germ of such a pleasure-seeking babbling in the protracted iterations of the same sound. The first reduplications and serial iterations, _a-a_, _ma-ma_, etc., may be due to physiological inertia, the mere tendency to move along any track that happens to be struck, the very same tendency which makes a prosy speaker go on repeating himself. At the same time there is without doubt in these infantile iterations a rudiment of self-imitation. That is to say, the child having produced a sound, as _na_ or _am_, impulsively proceeds to repeat the performance in order to obtain a renewal of the sound-effect. This renewed impulse may be supposed further to bring with it a germ of the pleasure of iteration of sound, or assonance. The addition of a simple rhythmic character to the series of sounds is a further indication of its pleasure-seeking character. Indeed we have in this infantile ‘la-la-ing’ more a rudiment of song and music than of articulate speech. The rude vocal music of savages consists of a similar rhythmic threading of meaningless sounds in which as in this infantile song changes of feeling reflect themselves. We may best describe this infantile babbling then as voice-play and as rude spontaneous singing, the utterance of a mood, indulged in for the sake of its own delight, and serving by a happy arrangement of nature as a preliminary practice in the production of articulate or linguistic sounds.

_Transition to Articulate Speech._

Let us now seek to understand how this undesigned trying of the articulate instrument passes into true significant articulation, how this speech-protoplasm develops into the organism that we call language. And here the question at once arises: Does the child tend to utilise the sounds thus acquired as signs apart from the influence of education, that is to say, of the articulate sounds produced by others and impressed as signs upon his attention? The question is not easy to answer owing to the early development of the imitative impulse and to the constant and all-pervading influence of education in the nursery. Yet I will offer a tentative answer.

That a child when he has reached a certain stage of intelligence would be able to make use of signs quite apart from example and education is what one might expect. Any one who has noticed how a young cat, completely isolated from the influence of example, will spontaneously hit on the gesture of touching the arm of a person sitting at a meal by way of asking to be fed, cannot be surprised that children should prove themselves capable of inventing signs. We know, too, that deaf-mutes will, self-prompted, develop among themselves an elaborate system of gesture-signs, and further express their feelings and desires by sounds, which though not heard by themselves may be understood by others and so serve as effective signs of their needs and wishes. The normal child, too, in spite of the powerful influences which go to make him adopt as signs the articulate sounds employed by others, shows a germ of unprompted and original sign-making. The earliest of such unlearnt signs are simple gesture-movements, such as stretching out the arms when the child desires to be taken by the nurse.[62] Nobody has suggested that these are learnt by imitation. The same is true of other familiar gesture-movements, which appear towards the end of the first year or later, as pulling your dress just as a dog does, when the child wants you to go with him, touching the chair when he wants you to sit down, or (as Darwin’s child did when just over a year) taking a bit of paper and pointing to the fire by way of signifying his wish to see the paper burnt. The gesture of pointing, though no doubt commonly aided by example, is probably capable of being reached instinctively as an outgrowth from the grasping movement.

-----

Footnote 62:

The nature of gesture, its relation to language proper, and its
prevalence in infancy, among imbecile children, deaf-mutes, etc., are
discussed by Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, chap. vi.

-----

These gesture-signs, I find, play a larger part in the case of children who are backward in talking, and so are nearer the condition of the deaf-mute. Thus a lady in sending me notes on her three children remarks that the one who was particularly backward in his speech made a free use of gesture-signs. When sixteen months old he had certain _general_ signs of this sort, using a sniff as a sign of flower, and a mimic kiss as a sign of living things, _i.e._, all sorts of animals.[63]

-----

Footnote 63:

A charming example of pantomimic gesture on the part of a little girl
in describing to her father her first bath in the sea is given by
Romanes, _op. cit._, p. 220.

-----

Just as movements may thus be used instinctively, that is, without aid from others’ example, both as expressing simple feelings and desires, and also, as in the case just mentioned, as indicating ideas, so spontaneously formed sounds may be used as signs. As pointed out above the first self-prompted articulation is closely connected with feeling, and we find that in the second half-year when the preliminary practice has been gone through certain sounds take on a distinctly expressive function. Thus one little boy when eight months old habitually used the sound ‘ma-ma’ when miserable, and ‘da-da’ when pleased. Among these instinctive expressive sounds one of the most important is that indicative of hunger. I find again and again that a special sound is marked off as a mode of expression or sign of this craving. This fact will be referred to again presently.

True language-sounds significant of things grow out of this spontaneous expressive articulation. Thus the demonstrative sign _da_ which accompanies the pointing, and which seems to be frequently used with slight modifications by German as well as by English children, is probably in its inception merely an interjectional expression of the faint shock of wonder produced by the appearance in the visual field of a new object. But used as a concomitant of the pointing gesture it takes on a demonstrative or indicative function, announcing the presence or arrival of an object in a particular locality or direction. A somewhat similar case is that of ‘ata’ or ‘tata,’ a sign used to denote the departure or disappearance of an object. These signs are, as Preyer shows, spontaneous and not imitative (_e.g._, of ‘there’ (da), ‘all gone’). This is confirmed by the fact that they vary greatly. Thus Preyer’s boy used for “there” ‘da,’ ‘nda,’ ‘nta,’ etc., and for “all gone” ‘atta,’ ‘f-tu,’ ‘tuff,’ etc. Again, Tiedemann’s boy used the sound ‘ah-ah,’ and one of Stanley Hall’s children the sound ‘eh,’ when pointing to an object. We may conclude then that there are spontaneous vocal reactions expressive of the contrasting mental states answering to the appearance or arrival and the disappearance or departure of an impressive and interesting object, and that, further, these reactions when recognised by others tend to become fixed as linguistic signs.[64]

-----

Footnote 64:

See Preyer, _op. cit._, pp. 353, 390, 391.

-----

Just as in the case of the gesture-movements, sniffing, kissing, so in that of expressive vocal sounds we may see a tendency to take on the function of true signs of ideas. One of the best illustrations of this is to be found in the invention of a word-sound for things to eat. I have pointed out that the state of hunger with its characteristic misery becomes at an early stage marked off by a distinctive expressive sign. At a later stage this or some other sound comes to be used intelligently as a means of _asking_ for food. Darwin’s boy employed the sound _mum_ in this way; another English child used ‘numby,’ and yet another ‘nini’; a French child observed by M. Taine made use of ‘ham’. The predominance of the labial _m_ shows the early formation of these quasi-linguistic signs, and suggests that they were developed out of the primary instinctive ‘_m_’ sound.[65] Such sounds, coming to be understood by the nurse, tend to become fixed as modes of asking for food.

-----

Footnote 65:

See the quotation from Lieber, in Taine’s _On Intelligence_, part ii.,
book iv., chap. i. The sign for ‘I want to eat’ is in some cases
formed by a generalising process out of a sound supplied by another,
as the name of a particular edible. See the example given by Preyer,
_op. cit._, p. 362.

-----

It seems but a step from the demand ‘Give me food’ to the pointing out or naming of things as food. And so good an observer as Darwin says that his boy used the sound ‘mum’ not only for conveying the demand or command ‘Give me food,’ but also as a substantive ‘food’ of wide application. He later went on to erect a rudimentary classification on the basis of this substantive, calling sugar ‘shu-mum’ and even breaking up this subdivision by calling liquorice “black shu-mum”.[66] This however seems, so far as I can ascertain, to be exceptional. In most vocabularies of children of two or three no generic term for food is found, though names for particular kinds of food, _e.g._, milk, bread, are in use. This agrees with the general order of development of thought-signs, the names of easily distinguished species appearing in the case of the individual as in that of the race before those of comprehensive and ‘abstract’ genera such as ‘food’. It is probable, therefore, that these early signs for food are but imperfectly developed into true thought-symbols or names. They retain much of their primordial character as expressions of desire and possibly of the volitional state answering to a command. This is borne out by the fact that the child spoken of by Taine used the sound ‘tem’ as a sort of general imperative for ‘give!’ ‘take!’ ‘look!’ etc.[67]

-----

Footnote 66:

See _Mind_, vol. ii., p. 293.

Footnote 67:

See _Mind_, vol. ii., p. 255.

-----

Another early example of an emotional expression passing into a germinal sign is that called forth at the sight of moving creatures. This acts as a strong stimulus to the baby brain, and vigorous muscular reactions, vocal and other, are wont to appear. One little boy of twelve and three-quarter months usually expressed his excitement by the sound “Dō-boo-boo,” which was used regularly for about ten days on the appearance of a dog, a horse, a bird, and so forth. Here we have a protoplasmic condition of the lingual organism which we call a name, a condition destined never to pass into another and higher. Sometimes, however, these explosives at the sight of animal life grow into comparatively fixed signs of recognition.

In this spontaneous invention of quasi-linguistic sounds imitation plays a considerable part. It is evident, indeed, that gestures are largely imitative. Thus the sniff and the mimic kiss referred to just now are plainly imitations of movements. The pointing gesture, too, may be said to be a kind of imitation of the reaching and appropriating movement of the arm. The sound ‘dō-boo-boo’ used on seeing an animal was probably imitative. According to Preyer the sounds called forth by the sight of moving objects, _e.g._, rolling balls and wheels, are imitative.[68] Whether the signs of hunger, ‘mum,’ ‘numby,’ are due to modifications of the movements carried out in sucking, seems to be more problematic.[69]

-----

Footnote 68:

_Op. cit._, p. 358.

Footnote 69:

A fact that appears to tell against imitation here is that one little
boy of seventeen months used the sound ‘did’n’ for anything to eat.

-----

In certain cases imitation is the one sufficient source of the sound. In what are called onomatopoetic sounds the child seeks to mimic some natural sound, and such imitation is capable of becoming a fruitful source of original linguistic invention. A boy between nine and ten months imitated the sound of young roosters by drawing in his breath, and this noise became for a time a kind of name for any feathered creature, including small birds. More commonly such onomatopoetic sounds come to be distinctive recognition-signs of particular classes of animals, such as ‘oua-oua’ or ‘bow-wow’ for the dog, ‘moo-moo’ for the cow, ‘ouack-ouack’ or ‘kuack’ for the duck, and so forth.

It may, of course, be said that these mimic sounds are in part learnt from the traditional vocabulary of the nursery, in which the nurse takes good care to instruct the child. But it is to be remembered that the traditional nursery language itself is largely an adoption of children’s own sounds. There is, moreover, ample independent evidence to show that children are zealous and indefatigable imitators of the sounds they hear as of the movements they see. Towards the end of the first six months and during the second half-year a child is apt to imitate eagerly any sound you choose to produce before him. In the case of Preyer’s boy this impulse to repeat the sounds he heard developed into a kind of echoing mania. The acquisition of others’ language plainly depends on the existence and the vigour of this mimetic impulse. And this same impulse leads the child beyond the servile adoption of our conventional sounds to the invention of new or onomatopoetic sounds. Thus one little child discovered the pretty sound ‘tin-tin’ as a name for the bell. Another child, a girl, quite unprompted, used a chirping sound for a bird, and a curious clicking noise on seeing the picture of a horse (no doubt in imitation of the sound of a horse’s hoofs); while a little boy used a faint whistle to indicate a bird, and the sound ‘click-click’ to denote a horse. In some cases a grown-up person’s imitation of a sound is imitated. Thus a child of about two used the sound ‘afta’ as a name for drinking, and also for drinking-vessel, “in imitation of the sound of sucking in air which the nurse used to make when _pretending to drink_”.[70]

-----

Footnote 70:

Quoted by Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, p. 143.

-----

In these two sources of original child-language, expression of states of feeling, desire, etc., and imitation, we have the two commonly assigned origins of human language. Into the difficult question how man first came to the use of language-sounds I do not propose to enter here. Whatever view may be taken with respect to the first beginnings of human speech, there seems little doubt that both expressive cries and imitations of natural sounds have had their place. To this extent, then, we may say that there is a parallelism between the early evolution of language in the case of the individual and in that of the race. Not only so, it may be said that our study of these tentatives of the child in language-formation tends to confirm the conclusions of philology and anthropology that the current of human speech did probably originate, in main part at least, by way of these two tributaries.[71]

-----

Footnote 71:

The concerted cries during co-operative work to which Noirée ascribes
the origin of language-sounds would seem, while having a special
physiological cause as concomitant and probably auxiliary motor
processes, to be analogous at least to emotional cries, in so far as
they spring out of a peculiar condition of feeling, that of effort. On
the other hand, as _concerted_ they came under the head of imitative
movements. So far as I can learn the nursery supplies no analogies to
these utterances.

-----

While vocal sounds which are clearly traceable to emotional expressions or to imitations form the staple of the normal child’s inventions they do not exhaust them. Some of these early self-prompted linguistic sounds cannot be readily explained. I find, for example, that children are apt to invent names for their nurses and sometimes for themselves which, so far as I can ascertain, bear no discoverable resemblance to the sounds used by others. Thus the same little girl that invented ‘numby’ for food and ‘afta’ for drinking called her nurse ‘Lee’ though no one else called her by any other name than ‘nurse’. It is difficult to suppose that the child was transforming the sound ‘nurse’ in this case. Preyer’s boy called his nurse, whom others addressed as Marie, ‘Wolá,’ which Preyer explains rather forcedly as deriving by inversion from the frequently heard ‘Ja wohl!’ A lady friend informs me that her little boy when thirteen months old called himself ‘Bla-a,’ though he was always addressed by others as Jeffrey, and that he stuck to ‘Bla-a’ for six months.[72] A germ of imitation is doubtless recognisable here in the preservation of the syllabic form or structure (that of monosyllable or dissyllable). Yet the amount of transformation is, to say the least, surprising in children, who show themselves capable of fairly close imitation. Possibly a child’s ear notes analogies of sound which escape our more sophisticated organ. However this be, the fact of such origination of names (other than those clearly onomatopoetic) is noteworthy.

-----

Footnote 72:

His brother when one year old called his nurse, whose real name was
Maud, Bur, which was probably a rough rendering of ‘nurse’.

-----

Lastly a reference may be made to the fact that children have shown themselves capable of inventing the rudiments of a simple kind of language. Professor Horatio Hale of America has made a special study of these spontaneous child-languages. One case is that of twin American boys who when the talking age came employed not the English sounds that they heard others speak but a language of their own. Another, and in some ways more remarkable case, is that of a little girl who at the age of two was backward in speaking, only using the names ‘papa’ and ‘mamma,’ and who, nevertheless, at that age, and in the first instance without any stimulus or aid from a companion, proceeded to invent a vocabulary and even simple sentence-forms of her own, which she subsequently prevailed on an elder brother to use with her. The vocables struck out, though suggesting some slight aural acquaintance with French—which, however, was never spoken in her home—are apparently quite arbitrary and not susceptible of explanation by imitation.[73]

-----

Footnote 73:

For a summary of Professor Hale’s researches see Romanes, _Mental
Evolution in Man_, p. 138 ff.

-----

I think the facts here brought together testify to the originality of the child in the field of linguistics. It may be said that in none of these cases is the effect of education wholly absent. A child, as we all know, is taught the names of objects and actions long before he can articulate. Thus Darwin’s boy knew the name of his nurse five months before he invented the vocable ‘mum’. It is obvious indeed that wherever children are subjected to normal training their sign-making impulse is stimulated by the example of others. At the same time the facts here given show that the working of this impulse may, in a certain number of children at least, strike out original lines of its own independently of the direct action of example and education. What is wanted now is to experiment carefully with an intelligent child, encouraging him to make signs by patient attention and ready understanding, but at the same time carefully abstaining from giving the lead or even taking up and adopting the first utterances so as to bring in the influence of imitation. I think there is little doubt that a child so situated might develop the rudiments of a vocal language. The experiment would be difficult to carry out, as it would mean the depriving of the child for a time of the advantages of education.[74]

-----

Footnote 74:

Of course, as Max Müller says (_The Science of Language_, i., p. 481
f.), the facts ascertained do not prove that ‘infants _left to
themselves_ would invent a language’. The influence of example, the
appeal to the imitative impulse, has been at work before the
inventions appear. Yet they do, I think, show that they have the
sign-making instinct, and might develop this to some extent even were
the educative influence of others’ language removed.

-----

_Beginnings of Linguistic Imitation._

The learning of the mother-tongue is one of the most instructive and, one may add, the most entertaining chapters in the history of the child’s education. The brave efforts to understand and follow, the characteristic and quaint errors that often result, the frequent outbursts of originality in bold attempts to enrich our vocabulary and our linguistic forms—all this will repay the most serious study, while it will provide ample amusement.

As pointed out above the learning of the mother-tongue is essentially a kind of imitation. The process is roughly as follows. The child hears a particular sound used by another, and gradually associates it with the object, the occurrence, the situation, along with which it again and again presents itself. When this stage is reached he can understand the word-sound as used by another though he cannot as yet use it. Later, by a considerable interval, he learns to connect the particular sound with the appropriate vocal action required for its production. As soon as this connexion is formed his sign-making impulse imitatively appropriates it by repeating it in circumstances similar to those in which he has heard others employ it.

The imitation of others’ articulate sounds begins, as already remarked, very early and long before the sign-making impulse appropriates them as true words. The impulse to imitate others’ movements seems first to come into play about the end of the fourth month; and traces of imitative movements of the mouth in articulation are said to have been observed in certain cases about this time. But it is only in the second half-year that the imitation of sounds becomes clearly marked. At first this imitation is rather of tone, rise and fall of voice, and apportioning of stress or accent than of articulate quality; but gradually the imitation takes on a more definite and complete character.[75]

-----

Footnote 75:

Preyer’s boy gave the first distinct imitative response to articulate
sound in the eleventh month. This is, so far as I can ascertain,
behind the average attainment.

-----

Towards the end of the year, in favourable cases, true linguistic imitation commences. That is to say, word-sounds gathered from others are used as such. Thus, a boy of ten months would correctly name his mother, ‘Mamma,’ his aunt, ‘Addy’ (Aunty), and a person called Maggie, ‘Azzie’.[76] As already suggested, this imitative reproduction of others’ words synchronises, roughly at least, with the first onomatopoetic imitation of natural sounds.

-----

Footnote 76:

Tracy, _The Psychology of Childhood_, p. 71.

-----

_Transformations of our Words._

As is well known the first tentatives in the use of the common speech-forms are very rough. The child in reproducing transforms, and these transformations are often curious and sufficiently puzzling.

The most obvious thing about these first infantile renderings of the adult’s language is that they are a simplification. This applies to all words alike. Monosyllables if involving a complex mass of sound are usually reduced, as when ‘dance’ is shortened to ‘da’. This clearly illustrates the difficulty of certain sound-combinations, a point to be touched on presently. More striking is the habitual reduction of dissyllables and polysyllables. Here we note that the child concentrates his effort on the reproduction of a part only of the syllabic series, which part he may of course give but very imperfectly. The shortening tends to go to the length of reducing to a monosyllable. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bik,’ ‘Constance’ ‘tun,’ ‘candle’ ‘ka,’ ‘bread and butter’ ‘bup’ or ‘bŭ’. Polysyllables, though occasionally cut down to monosyllables, as when ‘hippopotamus’ became ‘pots,’ are more frequently reduced to dissyllables, as when ‘periwinkle’ was shortened to ‘pinkle’. Handkerchief is a trying word for the English child, and for obvious reasons has to be learnt. It was reduced by the eldest child of a family to ‘hankish,’ by the two next to ‘hamfisch’ and by the last two to ‘hanky’. The little girl M. also reduced the last two syllables to ‘fish,’ making the sound ‘hanfish’.

There seems to be no simple law governing these reductions of verbal masses. The accentuated syllable, by exciting most attention, is commonly the one reproduced, as when ‘nasturtium’ became ‘turtium’.[77] In the case of long words the position of a syllable at the beginning or at the end of the word seems to give an advantage in this competition of sounds, the former by impressing the sound as the first heard (compare the way in which we note and remember the initial sound of a name),[78] the latter by impressing it as the last heard, and therefore best retained. The unequal articulatory facility of the several sound-combinations making up the word may also have an influence on this unconscious selection. I think it not unlikely, too, that germs of a kind of æsthetic preference for certain sounds as new, striking or fine, may co-operate here.[79]

-----

Footnote 77:

In the reduction of ‘Constance’ to ‘tun’ the same thing is seen, for
this child uniformly turned _k_’s into _t_’s. _Cf._ Preyer, _op.
cit._, p. 397.

Footnote 78:

It has been pointed out to me by Dr. Postgate that the secondary
stress on the first syllable of English words over four syllables (and
some four-syllabled words) may assist in impressing the first
syllable.

Footnote 79:

Recent psychological experiments show that similar influences are at
work when a person attempts to repeat a long series of verbal sounds,
say ten or twelve nonsense syllables. Initial or final position or
accent may favour the reproduction of a member of such a series.

-----

Such simplification of words is from the first opposed, and tends in time to be counteracted, by the growth of a feeling for their general form as determined by the number of syllables, as well as the distribution of stress and any accompanying alterations of tone or pitch. The infant’s first imitations of the sounds ‘good-bye,’ ‘all gone,’ and so forth, by couples which preserve hardly anything of the articulatory character, though they indicate the syllabic form, position of stress, and rising and falling inflection, illustrate the early development of this feeling. Hence we find in general an attempt to reproduce the number of syllables, and also to give the proper distribution of stress. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bítchic,’ ‘cellar’ ‘sítoo,’ ‘umbrella’ ‘nobélla,’ ‘elephant’ ‘étteno,’ or (by a German child) ‘ewebón,’ ‘kangaroo’ ‘kógglegoo,’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘ippenpótany,’ and so forth.[80]

-----

Footnote 80:

Here again we see a similarity between a child’s repetition of a name
heard, and an adult’s attempt to repeat a long series of syllabic
sounds. In the latter case also there is a general tendency to
preserve the length and rhythmic form of the whole series.

-----

As suggested above there goes from the first with the cutting down of the syllabic series a considerable alteration of the single constituent sounds. The vowel sounds are rarely omitted; yet they may be greatly modified, and these modifications occur regularly enough to suggest that the child finds certain nuances of vowel sounds comparatively hard to reproduce. Thus the short _ă_ in hat, and the long _ī_ (ai), seem to be acquired only after considerable practice.[81] But it is among the consonants that most trouble arises. Many of these, as the sibilants or ‘hisses,’ _s_, _sh_, the various _l_ and _r_ sounds, the dentals, the “point-teeth-open” _th_ and _dh_ (in ‘thin,’ ‘this’), the back or guttural ‘stops,’ _i.e._, _k_ and hard _g_, and others as _j_ or soft _g_ (as in ‘James,’ ‘gem’), appear, often at least, to cause difficulty at the beginning of the speech period. With these must be reckoned such combinations as _st_, _str_.

-----

Footnote 81:

With the diphthong or glide _ī_ may be taken _oi_, which was first
mastered by the child M. at the age of two years three months.

-----

In many cases the difficult sounds are merely dropped. Thus ‘poor’ may become ‘poo,’ ‘look’ ‘ook,’ ‘Schulter’ (German) ‘Ulter’. In the case of awkward combinations this dropping is apt to be confined to the difficult sound, provided, that is to say, the other is manageable alone. Thus ‘dance’ becomes ‘dan,’ ‘trocken’ (German) becomes ‘tokko’. More particularly _s_ and _sh_ are apt to be omitted before other consonants. Thus ‘stair’ becomes ‘tair,’ ‘sneeze’ ‘neeze,’ ‘schneiden’ (German) ‘neida,’ and so forth.

Along with such lame omissions we have the more vigorous procedure of substitutions. In certain cases there seems little if any kinship between the sounds or the articulatory actions by which they are produced. At the early stage more particularly almost any manageable sound seems to do duty as substitute. The early-acquired labials, including the labio-dental _f_ come in as serviceable ‘hacks’ at this stage. What we call lisping is indeed exemplified in this class of infantile substitutions. Children have been observed to say ‘fank’ for ‘thank’ and ‘mouf’ for ‘mouth,’ ‘feepy’ for ‘sleepy,’ ‘poofie’ for ‘pussy,’ ‘wiver’ for ‘river,’ ‘Bampe’ for ‘Lampe’ (German). The dentals, too, _d_ and _t_, are turned to all kinds of vicarious service. Thus we find ‘ribbon’ rendered by ‘dib,’ ‘gum’ by ‘dam,’ ‘Greete’ (German) by ‘Deete,’ ‘Gummi’ (German) by ‘Dummi,’ ‘cut’ by ‘tut,’ and ‘klopfen’ (German) by ‘topfen’. Similarly ‘gee-gee’ (horse), which oddly enough was first rendered by the child M. as ‘dee-gee,’ is altered to ‘dee-dee’. I find too that new sounds are apt to be put to this miscellaneous use. Thus one child after learning the aspirate (_h_) at two years not only brought it out with great emphasis in its proper place but began to use it as a substitute for other and unmanageable sounds. Thus he would say, ‘hie down on hofa’ for ‘lie down on sofa’. The aspirate is further used in place of _sh_, as when ‘shake’ was rendered by ‘hate,’ and of _st_, as when Preyer’s boy called ‘Stern’ ‘Hern’. In other cases we see that the little linguist is trying to get as near as possible to the sound, and such approximations are an interesting sign of progress. Thus in one case ‘chatterbox’ was rendered by ‘jabberwock,’ in another case ‘dress’ by ‘desh,’ in another (Preyer’s boy), ‘Tisch’ (German) by ‘Tiss’.[82]

-----

Footnote 82:

I find according to the notes sent me that the sounds _s_ and _sh_
develop unequally in the cases of different children. Some acquire
_s_, others _sh_ before the other.

-----

Besides omissions and substitution of sounds, occasional insertions are said to occur. According to one set of observations _r_ may be inserted after the broad _a_, as when ‘pocket’ was rendered by ‘barket’. A cockney is apt to do the same, as when he talks of having a ‘barth’ (bath). Yet this observation requires to be verified.

These alterations of articulate sound by the child remind one of the changes which the languages of communities undergo. We know, indeed, that these changes are due to imperfect imitation by succeeding generations of learners.[83] Hence we need not be surprised to find now and again analogies between these nursery transformations and those of words in the development of languages. In reproducing the sounds which he hears a child often illustrates a law of adult phonetic change. Thus changes within the same class of sounds, as the frequent alteration of ‘this’ into ‘dis,’ clearly correspond with those modifications recognised in Grimm’s Law. So, too, the common substitution of a dental for a guttural has its parallel in the changes of racial language.[84] Nobody again can note the transformation of _n_ into _m_ before _f_ in the form ‘hamfish’ for ‘handkerchief’ without thinking of the Greek change of συν into συμ before β, and like changes. Philologists may probably find many other parallels. One of them tells me that his little girl, on rendering _sh_ by the guttural _h_, reproduced a change in Spanish pronunciation. M. Egger compares a child’s rendering of ‘_tr_op’ (French) by ‘_cr_op’ with the transformation of the Latin ‘_tr_emere’ into ‘_cr_aindre’.

-----

Footnote 83:

See Sweet, _History of English Sounds_, p. 15.

Footnote 84:

See Sievers, _Phonetik_, p. 230.

-----

I have assumed here that children’s defective reproduction of our verbal sounds is the result of inability to produce certain sounds and not due to the want of a discrimination of the sounds by the ear. This may seem strange in the light of Preyer’s statement that the earlier impulsive babbling includes most, if not all, of the sounds required later on for articulation. This may turn out to be an exaggeration, yet there is no doubt, I think, that certain sounds, including some as the initial _l_ which are common in the earlier babbling stage, are not produced at the beginning of the articulatory period. As the avoidance of these occurs in all children alike it seems reasonable to infer that they involve difficult muscular combinations in the articulatory organ. At the same time it seems going too far to say, as Schultze does, that the order of acquisition of sounds corresponds with the degree of difficulty. The very variability of this order in the case of different children shows that there is no such simple correspondence as this.[85]

-----

Footnote 85:

_Cf._ Pollock, _Mind_, vi., p. 436, and Preyer, _op. cit._, p. 434.

-----

The explanation of those early omissions and alterations is probably a rather complex matter. To begin with, the speech-organs of a child may lose special aptitudes by the development of other and opposed aptitudes. A friend of mine, a physiologist, tells me that his little boy who said ‘ma-ma’ (but not ‘da-da’) at ten months lost at the age of nineteen months the use of _m_, for which he regularly substituted _b_. He suggests that the nasal sound _m_, though easy for a child in the sucking stage and accustomed to close the lips, may become difficult later on through the acquisition of open sounds. It is worth considering whether this principle does not apply to other inabilities. This, however, is a question for the science of phonetics.

We must remember, further, that it is one thing to carry out an articulatory movement as a child of nine months carries it out, ‘impulsively,’ through some congenitally arranged mode of exciting the proper motor centre, another thing to carry it out volitionally, _i.e._, in order to produce a desired result. This last means that the sound-effect of the movement has been learned, that the image or representation of it has been brought into definite connexion with a particular impulse, _viz._, that of carrying out the required movement: and this is now known to depend on the formation of some definite neural connexion between the auditory and the motor regions of the speech-centre. This process is clearly more complex than the first instinctive utterance, and may be furthered or hindered by various conditions. Thus a child’s own spontaneous babblings may not have sufficed to impress a particular sound on the memory; in which case his acquisition of it will be favoured or otherwise by the frequency with which it is produced by others in his hearing. It is probable that differences in the range and accuracy of production of sounds by nurse and mother tell from the first. The differences observable in the order of acquisition of sounds among children may be in part due to this, and not merely to differences in the speech-organ. It is probable, too, that children’s attention may be especially called to certain sounds or sound-groups, either because of a preferential liking for the sounds themselves, or because of a special need of them as useful names. M.’s mother assures me that the child seemed to dislike particular sounds as _j_, which she could and did occasionally pronounce, though she was given to altering them.[86] Another lady writes that her boy at the age of twenty-two months surprised her by suddenly bringing out the combination ‘scissors’. He had just begun to use scissors in cutting up paper, and so had acquired a practical interest in this sound-mass.

-----

Footnote 86:

The same child, capriciously as it might look, would sometimes avoid
_y_, as in saying ‘esh’ for ‘yes,’ though she regularly used this
sound as a substitute for _l_, saying ‘yook’ for ‘look,’ and so on.

-----

We may now pass to another of the commonly recognised defects of early articulation, _viz._, the transposition of sounds or metathesis. Sometimes it is two contiguous sounds which are transposed, as when ‘star’ is rendered by ‘tsar’ and ‘spoon’ by ‘psoon’. Here the motive of the change is evidently to facilitate the combination. We have a parallel to this in the use of ‘aks’ (ax) for ‘ask,’ a transposition which was not long since common enough in the West of England.[87] In other transpositions sounds are shifted further from their place. Preyer quotes a case in which there was a dislocation of vowel sounds, _viz._, in the transformation of ‘bite’ (German) into ‘beti’.[88] Here there seems to be no question of avoiding a difficult combination. Other examples are the following: ‘hoogshur’ for ‘sugar’ (one of the first noticed at the age of two); ‘mungar’ for ‘grandmamma,’ ‘punga’ for ‘grandpapa,’ and ‘natis’ for ‘nasty’ (boy between eighteen and twenty-four months); and ‘boofitul’ for ‘beautiful’. Here again we have an analogy to defective speech in adults. When a man is very tired he is liable to precisely similar inversions of order. The explanation seems to be that the right group of sounds may present itself to the speaker’s consciousness without any clear apprehension of their temporal order. Perhaps quasi-æsthetic preferences play a part here too. The child M. seems to have preferred the sequence _m-n_ to _n-m_, saying ‘jaymen’ for ‘geranium’, ‘burman’ for ‘laburnum’.

-----

Footnote 87:

See Sweet, _History of English Sounds_, p. 33; _cf._ also the change
of ‘frith’ to ‘firth’.

Footnote 88:

_Op. cit._, p. 397.

-----

Another interesting feature in this early articulation is the impulse to double sounds, to get a kind of effect of assonance or of rhyme by a repetition of sound or sound-group. The first and simplest form of this is where a whole sound-mass or syllable is iterated, as in the familiar ‘ba-ba,’ ‘gee-gee’ ‘ni-ni’ (for nice). Some children frequently turn monosyllables into reduplications, making book ‘boom-boom’ and so forth. It is, however, in attempting dissyllables that the reduplication is most common. Thus ‘naughty’ becomes ‘na-na,’ ‘faster’ ‘fa-fa,’ ‘Julia’ ‘dum-dum,’ and so forth, where the repeated syllable displaces the second original syllable and so serves to retain something of the original word-form. In some cases the second and unaccented syllable is selected for reduplication, as in the instance quoted by Perez, ‘peau-peau’ for ‘chapeau’. Such reduplications are sometimes aided by kinship of sound, as when the little girl M. changed ‘purple’ into its primitive form ‘purpur’.

These early reduplications are clearly a continuation of the repetitions observable in the earlier babbling, and grow out of the same motive, the impulse to go on doing a thing, and the pleasure of repetition and self-imitation. As is well known, these reduplications have their parallel in many of the names used by savage tribes.[89]

-----

Footnote 89:

See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i., 198. On the taking up of baby
reduplications into language see the same work, i., 204. _Cf._ the
same writer’s _Anthropology_, p. 129.

-----

In addition to these palpable reduplications of sound-masses we have repetitions of single sounds, the repeated sound being substituted for another and foreign one. This answers to what is called in phonetics ‘assimilations’.[90] In the majority of cases the assimilation is ‘progressive,’ the change being carried out by a preceding on a succeeding sound. Examples are ‘Kikie’ for ‘Kitty,’ and ‘purpur’ for ‘purple’. This last transformation, though it was made by the little daughter of a distinguished philologist, was quite innocent of classical influence, and was clearly motived by the childish love of reduplication of sound. In many cases the substitution of an easy for a difficult sound seems to be determined in part by assimilation, as when ‘another’ was rendered by ‘annunner,’ ‘gateau’ (French) by ‘ca-co’. The assimilation seems, too, sometimes to work “regressively,” as when ‘thick’ becomes ‘kick,’ ‘Bonnie Dundee’ ‘Bun-dun,’ and ‘tortue’ (French) ‘tu-tu,’ in which two last reduplication is secured approximately or completely by change of vowel.[91] There seem also to be cases of what may be called partial assimilation, that is, a tendency to transform a sound into one of the same class as the first. “If (writes a mother of her boy) a word began with a labial he generally concluded it with a labial, making ‘bird,’ for example, ‘bom’.” But these cases are not, perhaps, perfectly clear examples of assimilation.

-----

Footnote 90:

See above, p. 137; _cf._ Sievers, _Phonetik_, p. 236.

Footnote 91:

Dr. Postgate suggests that the current terms ‘progressive’ and
‘regressive’ would be better rendered by ‘retrospective’ and
‘prospective’.

-----