Chapter XX: Summary of Results (2)

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. Ae; 2. A; 3. U; 4. O; 5. E; 6. I; 7. Oe; 8. Ue. It is correct that _ae_ 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 _ae_ is produced with less of effort than is _a_. The reverse is the case. Further, _oe_ is said to present "enormous difficulties," and hence has the place next to the last; but I have often heard the _oe_, 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_, _ae_, _a_, _oe_, _o_, _ai_, _ao_, _i_, _e_, _ue_, _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 _ue_ 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 assigned 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 associated 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 _ae_, 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-ae_ 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 association 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 _aerrae_, which was uttered for months. Also _aeckn_ appeared early. The principle of the least effort Lindner finds to be almost absolutely refuted by his observations. He rightly remarks that the frequent repetitions 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), _aechard_ (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 substituted _u_ for _i_ and _e_, saying _hund_ for "Kind," and _uluwant_ for "Elephant"; thus, _ein fomme hund lass waede much_ for "ein frommes Kind lass werden mich" (let me become a pious child). Lindner's child, however, called "werden" not _waede_ 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 pronunciation was, however, still incorrect, for the correct pronunciation of the separate sounds does not by any means carry with it the pronunciation 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 pronunciation is also delayed by the child's preference of his original incorrect pronunciation, to which he is accustomed, and which is encouraged by imitations of it on the part of his relatives. Lindner illustrates 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 _gebhuete_ for "behuete." "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_; "Sparbuechse" (savings-box) _babichse_, _spabichse_, _spassbuechse_, _sparzbuechse_; "Haering" (herring, also gold-fish) _haenging_. 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 _aerae_, _haegae_, _aeche_, 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 pronounced for them, or else substituted 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 glass, and pointed at it, saying _taete_ (for _Kaete_). 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; _taete_ for _Kaete_ (F_{1}); _ida_, _papa_, _tata_ for _Tante_ (aunt); _taete_ (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 _Wasser_ (water); _wuffe_ for _Suppe_ (F_{1}); _tatte_ for _Tante_; _tittak_; _Hut_ (F_{3}).

XIX. _at_ for _Katze_ (cat); _duh_ for _Kuh_ (cow); _w[=a]n_ for _Schwan_ (swan); _nine_ for _Kaninchen_ (rabbit); _betta_ for _Blaetter_ (leaves); _butta_ for _Butterblume_ (buttercup); _fiedemann_ for _Friedemann_; _taeti_ for _Kaeti_ (F_{1}); _gad_ for _gerade_ (straight); _kumm_ for _krumm_ (crooked) (F_{3}).

XX. _fidat_ for _Zwieback_ (biscuit); _tierdatten_ for _Thiergarten_ (zooelogical garden); _waden_ for _wagen_ (carriage); _naehnaden_ for _Naehnadel_ (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}); _tue_ for _Thuer_ (door); _bau_ for _bauen_ (build); _teta_ for _Kaete_; _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 _Bluemelein_ (little flowers); _mamase_ for _Mamachen_ (little mama); _tettern_ for _klettern_ (climb); _Papa weint nis_ (Papa doesn't cry), first sentence (F_{1}); _Mamase, Taete artig--Tuss_ (means _Mamachen, Kaete 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); _bueda_ for _Bruederchen_ (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 _Hellmuth_ (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 horsemen, 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 _aeh-aeh-aeh_; 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 _oe-[)e]_ and other vowels. There is no imitation in this, but a reaction that is possible only through participation 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 Struempell). 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 association 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 Association," 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 repetition of the tympanic vibrations by means of the vibrations of the vocal cords, is employed as a _word_ for a phenomenon associated 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 Mueller, to look for the origin of language in the imitation of sounds and the repetition 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 associated 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 Association," 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 pronouncing 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 pronunciation 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 substituted 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 classes, 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 class, _wrap_ and _rag_ into a second--whereas they were put in four different classes--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 pronunciation 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:

-----------------------|----------------|-----------------|------------- Parts of Speech. | First child. | Second child. | Third child. -----------------------|----------------|-----------------|------------- Nouns | 285 | 230 | 113 Verbs | 107 | 90 | 30 Adjectives | 34 | 37 | 13 Adverbs | 29 | 17 | 6 Other parts of speech | 28 | 25 | 11 |----------------|-----------------|------------- Total | 483 | 399 | 173 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A fourth child, brother of the first and second, made use (according to the lists kindly communicated to me by the author), in his twenty-fourth month, of 227 nouns--some proper names among them--105 verbs, 22 adjectives, 10 adverbs, and 33 words of the remaining classes (all these figures being taken from the notes of the child's mother).

From these four vocabularies of the twenty-fourth month it plainly results that the stock of words and the kinds of words depend primarily on the words most used in the neighborhood of the child, and the objects most frequently perceived; they can not, therefore, be alike in different children. The daughters of the astronomer, before their third year, name correctly a portrait of Galileo, and one of Struve. A local "tone," or peculiarity of this sort, attaches to every individual child, a general one to the children of a race. I may add that the third child (in England) seems to have been less accurately observed than the others (in Madison, Wisconsin). Great patience and attention are required to observe and note down every word used by a child in a month.

Without mentioning the name of Holden, but referring to his investigations, which, in spite of the defects mentioned, are of the very highest merit, M. W. Humphreys, Professor of Greek in Vanderbilt University, Nashville, has published a similar treatise, based on observations of his own ("A Contribution to Infantile Linguistic," in the "Transactions of the American Philological Association," 1880, xi, pp. 6-17). He collected, with the help of a dictionary, all the words that a little girl of just two years "had full command of," whether correctly pronounced or not, and whether they appeared exactly in the twenty-fourth month or earlier. He simply required to be convinced that every one of the words was understood and had been spontaneously used, and could still be used. He did not include proper names, or words (amounting to hundreds) from nursery-rhymes, or numerals, or names of the days of the week, because he was not sure that the child had a definite idea associated with them. The vocabulary thus numbered 1,121 words: 592 nouns, 283 verbs, 114 adjectives, 56 adverbs, 35 pronouns, 28 prepositions, 5 conjunctions, and 8 interjections. In this table irregular verb-and noun-forms are not counted as separate words, except in the case of defective verbs, as _am_, _was_, _been_. The author presents the 1,121 words according to their classification as parts of speech, and according to initial _letters_, not according to initial _sounds_, although he himself declares this an erroneous proceeding, as I did in discussing Holden's paper. The only reason for it was convenience.

In the adoption of a word by the child, difficulty of utterance had some influence in the _first_ year; when the little girl was two years old, this had ceased to have any effect whatever. She had by that time adopted certain substitutes for letters that she could not pronounce, and words containing these letters were employed by her as freely as if the substitutes had been the correct sounds. In regard to the meaning, and the frequency of use dependent upon it, it is to be observed that the simplest ideas are most frequently expressed. When two words are synonymous, one of them will be used exclusively by a child, because of the rarer employment of the other by persons speaking in the child's presence. Here, too, the local "tone" that has been mentioned made itself felt; thus, the little girl used the word "crinoid" every day, to designate sections of fossil crinoid stems which abounded in neighboring gravel walks.

As to parts of speech, nouns were most readily seized; then, in order, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns. Prepositions and conjunctions the child began to employ early, but acquired them slowly. Natural interjections--_wah_, for instance--she used to some extent from the beginning; conventional ones came rather late.

The following observations by Humphreys are very remarkable, and are, in part, up to this time unique:

When about four months old the child began a curious and amusing mimicry of conversation, in which she so closely imitated the ordinary cadences that persons in an adjacent room would mistake it for actual conversation. The articulation, however, was indistinct, and the vowel-sounds obscure, and no attempt at separate words, whether real or imaginary, was made until she was six months old, _when she articulated most syllables distinctly_, without any apparent effort.

When she was eight months old it was discovered that she knew by name every person in the house, as well as most of the objects in her room, and the parts of the body, especially of the face. She also understood simple sentences, such as, "Where is the fire?" "Where is the baby in the glass?" to which she would reply by pointing. In the following months she named many things correctly, thus using words as words in the proper sense. The pronunciation of some final consonants was indistinct, but all initial consonants were distinctly pronounced, except _th_, _t_, _d_, _n_, _l_. These the child learned in the eleventh month. At this period she could imitate with accuracy any sound given her, and had a special preference for _ng_ (_ngang_, _ngeng_), beginning a mimicry of language again, this time using real or imaginary words, without reference to signification. But an obscurity of vowel-sounds had begun again. After the first year her facility of utterance seemed to have been lost, so that she watched the mouths of others closely when they were talking, and labored painfully after the sounds. Finally, she dropped her mimicry of language, and, at first very slowly, acquired words with the ordinary infant pronunciation, showing a preference for labials (_p_, _b_, _m_) and linguals (_t_, _d_, _n_, not _l_). Presently she substituted easy sounds for difficult ones. In the period from eighteen months to two years of age, the following defects of articulation appeared regularly: _v_ was pronounced like _b_, _th_ (_this_) like _d_, _th_ (_thin_) like _t_, _z_ like _d_, _s_ like _t_, _r_ like _w_, _j_ like _d_, _ch_ like _t_, _sh_ like _t_; further:

Initial. Final.
_f_ like _w_, _f_ like _p_,
_l_ not at all, _l_ correctly,
_g_ like _d_, _g_ correctly,
_k_ like _t_, _k_ correctly,

and in general correctly, _m_, _b_, _p_, _n_, _d_, _t_, _h_, _ng_, _w_. On the other hand, the initial sounds _bl_, _br_, _li_, _pr_, _fl_, _fr_, _dr_, _tr_, _thr_, _sp_, _st_, became _b_, _b_, _p_, _p_, _w_, _w_, _d_, _t_, _t_, _p_, _t_; and the initial sounds _sk_, _sw_, _sm_, _sn_, _sl_, _gl_, _gr_, _kw_, _kl_, _kr_, _hw_, became _t_, _w_, _m_, _n_, _t_ (for _s_), _d_, _w_, _w_, _t_, _w_, _hw_ (_h_ weak). The letter _y_ was not pronounced at all, at first.

From this table, as Humphreys rightly observes, may be drawn the following conclusions in regard to the initial sounds of words:

When a letter which could be pronounced correctly preceded another, the first was retained, but, if both were represented by substitutes, the second was retained. If, however, the second was one which the child made silent, then she pronounced the first. Thus, _tr_ = _t_, _kr_ = _w_ (for _r_), _kl_ = _t_ (for _k_, _l_ being one of her silent letters). With these results should be compared those presented in regard to German children, in the paper of Fritz Schultze (p. 239 above) (which likewise are not of universal application).

The accent was for the most part placed on the last syllable. Only one case of the invention of a new word could be established. When the child was about eighteen months old, a fly flew all about her plate when she was eating, and she exclaimed, "The old fly went wiggely-waggely." But at this time the child had already learned to speak; she knew, therefore, that perceptions are expressed by words. Notwithstanding, the original invention remains remarkable, unless there may be found in it a reminiscence of some expression out of nursery-talk (cf., p. 238). Until the eighteenth month, "no" signified both "yes" and "no."

At the end of two years subordinate propositions were correctly employed. This was the case also with a German girl in Jena, who, for instance, said, "The ball which Puck has" (P. Fuerbringer). In the case of my boy such sentences did not make their appearance till much later.

I had hoped to find trustworthy observations in several other works besides those mentioned. Their titles led one to expect statements concerning the acquirement of speech by little children; thus, "Das Kind, Tagebuch eines Vaters" ("The Child, A Father's Diary"), by H. Semmig (second edition, Leipsic, 1876), and the book of B. Perez, already named (p. 239). But inasmuch as for the former of these writers the first cry of the newly-born is a "triumphal song of everlasting life," and for the second author "the glance" is associated with "the magnetic effluvia of the will," I must leave both of these works out of consideration. The second contains many statements concerning the doings and sayings of little children in France; but these can not easily be turned to account.

The same author has issued a new edition, in abridged form, of the "Memoirs," written, according to him, by Dietrich Tiedemann, of a son of Tiedemann two years of age (the biologist, Friedrich Tiedemann, born in 1781). (_Thierri Tiedemann et la science de l'enfant. Mes deux chats. Fragment de psychologie comparee par Bernard Perez._ Paris, 1881, pp. 7-38; Tiedemann, 39-78. "The First Six Weeks of Two Cats.") But it is merely on account of its historical interest that the book is mentioned here, as the scanty (and by no means objective) notes of the diary were made a hundred years ago. The treatises of Pollock and Egger, mentioned in the periodical "Mind" (London, July, 1881, No. 23), I am not acquainted with, and the same is true of the work of Schwarz (mentioned above, p. 224).

Very good general statements concerning the child's acquisition of speech are to be found in Degerando ("L'education des sourds-muets de naissance," 1 vol., Paris, 1827, pp. 32-57). He rightly maintains that the child learns to speak through his own observation, without attention from other persons, far more than through systematic instruction; the looks and gestures of the members of the family when talking with one another are especially observed by the child, who avails himself of them in divining the meaning of the words he hears. This divining, or guessing, plays in fact a chief part in the learning of speech, as I have several times remarked.

New comprehensive diaries concerning the actions of children in the first years of life are urgently to be desired. They should contain nothing but well-established _facts_, no hypotheses, and no repetitions of the statements of others.

Among the very friendly notes that have been sent to me, the following particularly conform to the above requirements. They were most kindly placed at my disposal by the Baroness von Taube, of Esthonia, daughter of the very widely and honorably known Count Keyserling. They relate to her first-born child, and come all of them from the mother herself:

In the first five months I heard from my son, when he cried, all
the vowels. The sound _ae_ was the first and most frequent. Of
the consonants, on the other hand, I heard only _g_, which
appeared after seven weeks. When the child was fretful he often
cried _gege_; when in good humor he often repeated the syllables
_agu_, _agoe_, _aeou_, _ogoe_, _eia_; then _l_ came in, _uel_.

The same sounds in the case of my daughter; but from her I
heard, up to her tenth month, in spite of all my observation, no
other consonants than _g_, _b_, _w_, rarely _l_, and finally
_m_-sounds. With my son at the beginning of the seventh month an
R-sound appeared--_grr_, _grrr_, plainly associated with _d_ in
_dirr dirr_. These sounds were decidedly sounds of discomfort,
which expressed dissatisfaction, violent excitement, sleepiness;
and they are made even now by the boy at four years of age when,
e. g., he is in pain. In the ninth month _dada_ and _b_,
_bab-a_, _baeb-ae_ are added. _Agoe_ also is often said, and _oe_
still more often. This _oe_ is already a kind of conscious
attempt at speaking, for he uses it when he sees anything new,
e. g., the dog Caro, which he observes with eager attention, as
he does the cat, uttering aloud meanwhile _oe, oe_.

If any one is called, the child calls in a very loud voice, _Oe,
oe!_ First imitation. (Gestures have been imitated since the
eighth month, and the making of grimaces in the child's presence
had to be strictly forbidden.) Understanding for what is said is
also present, for when one calls "Caro, Caro," in his hearing,
he looks about him as if he were looking for the dog. In the
tenth month he often repeats _Pap-ba_, but it has no
significance.

If "Backe backe kuchen" ("bake cakes," corresponding to our

"pat-a-cake") is said to him, he immediately pats his hands as
if preparing bread for baking. In the eleventh month _Pap-ba_ is
dropped. He now says often _daedaedaedae_, and, when he is dull or
excited (_erregt_) or sleepy, _drin, drin_. These _r_-sounds do
not occur with my daughter; but since her tenth month she uses
_m_-sounds, _maemmae_ when she is sleepy or dull. The boy now
stretches out his hand and beckons when he sees any one at a
distance. At sight of anything new, he no longer says _oe_, but
_aeda_ (twelfth month). He likes to imitate gestures with his
arms and mouth; he observes attentively the _movements of the
lips of one who is speaking_, sometimes _touching_ at the same
time the _mouth of the speaker with his finger_.

At ten months the first teeth came. In the eleventh month the
child was for the first time taken out into the open air. Now
the _g_-sounds again become prominent--_aga_, _ga_, _gugag_. The
child begins to creep, but often falls, and while making his
toilsome efforts keeps crying out in a very comical manner,
_aech, aech, aech!_

At eleven and a half months a great advance. The child is now
much out of doors, and enjoys seeing horses, cows, hens, and
ducks. When he sees the hens he says _gog, gog_, and even utters
some croaking sounds. He can also imitate at once the sound
_prrr_ when it is pronounced to him. If _papa_ is pronounced for
him (he has lost this word), he responds regularly _wawa_ or
_wawawa_. I have only once heard _wauwau_ from him. If he hears
anybody cough, he immediately gives a little imitative cough in
fun (vol. i, p. 288), and this sounds very comical.

He makes much use of _od_, _aedo_, and _aed_, and this also when
he sees pictures. When the boy had reached the age of a year, he
was weaned; from that time his mental development was very
rapid. If any one sings to him gi ga gack, he responds
invariably _gack_.

He begins to adapt sounds to objects: imitation of sound is the
chief basis of this adaptation. He calls the ducks with _gaek,
gaek_, and imitates the cock, after a fashion, names the dog
_aua_ (this he got from his nurse), not only when he sees the
animal, but also when he hears him bark. E. g., the child is
playing busily with pasteboard boxes; the dog begins to bark
outside of the house; the child listens and says _aua_. I roll
his little carriage back and forth; he immediately says _brrr_,
pointing to it with his hand; he wants to ride, and I have to
put him in (he had heard _burra_, as a name for riding, from his
nurse). When he sees a horse, he says _prr_ (this has likewise
been said for him).

I remark here that the notion that the child thinks out its own
language--a notion I have often met with, held by people not
well informed in regard to this matter--rests on defective
observation. The child has part of his language given to him by
others; part is the result of his own sound-imitations--of
animals, e. g.--and part rests on mutilations of our language.
At the beginning of the thirteenth month he suddenly names all
objects and pictures, for some days, _dodo_, _toto_, which takes
the place of his former _oe_; then he calls them _niana_, which
he heard frequently, as it means "nurse" in Russian. Everything
now is called _niana_: _dirr_ continues to be the sign of
extreme discomfort.

_Papba_ is no more said, ever; on the other hand, _mamma_
appears for the first time, but without any significance, still
less with any application to the mother.

The word _niana_ becomes now the expression of desire, whether
of his food or of going to somebody or somewhere. Sometimes,
also, under the same circumstances, he cries _maemmae_ and
_mamma_; the dog is now decidedly called _aua_, the horse _prr_.

_14th Month._--He now names also single objects in his
picture-book: the dog, _aua_, the cats, _tith_ (pronounced as in
English), _kiss kiss_ having been said for him; horses, _prr_,
all birds, _gock_ or _gack_. In the house of a neighbor he
observes at once the picture, although it hangs high up on the
wall, of the emperor driving in a sleigh, and cries _prrr_.
Animals that he does not know he calls, whether in the book or
the real animals, _aua_ or _ua_, e. g. cows.

His nurse, to whom he is much attached, he now calls decidedly
_niania_, although he continues to use this word in another
sense also. If she is absent for some time, he calls, longingly,
_niania_, _niania_. He sometimes calls me _mamma_; but not quite
surely yet. He babbles a good deal to himself; says over all his
words, and makes variations in his repertory, e. g., _niana_,
_kanna_, _danna_; repeats syllables and words, producing also
quite strange and unusual sounds, and accumulations of
consonants, like _mba_, _mpta_. As soon as he wakes in the
morning he takes up these meaningless language-exercises, and I
hear him then going on in an endless babble.

When he does not want a thing, he shakes his head as a sign of
refusal; this no one has taught him. Nodding the head as a sign
of assent or affirmation he is not yet acquainted with, and
learns it much later.

The nurse speaks with me of Caro; the child attends and says
_aua_; he knows what we were talking about. If his grandmother
says, "Give the little hand," he at once stretches it out toward
her. He understands what is said, and begins consciously to
repeat it. His efforts to pronounce the word Grossmama
(grandmamma) are comical; in spite of all his pains, he can not
get beyond the _gr_; says _Gr-mama_, and finally _Goo-mama_, and
makes this utterance every time he sees his grandmother. At this
time he learns also from his nurse the word _koppa_ as a name
for horse, instead of _prr_, _burra_, which, from this time
forth, denotes only going in a carriage. _Koppa_ is probably a
formation from "hoppa koppati," an imitation of the sound of the
hoofs.

At the end of the fourteenth month, his stock of words is much
enlarged. The child plays much in the open air, sees much, and
advances in his development; words and sounds are more and more
suited to conceptions. He wakes in the night and says _appa_,
which means "Give me some drink." The ball he calls _Ball_;
flower, _Bume_ (for Blume); cat, _katz_ and _kotz_ (Katze)--what
_kalla_, _kanna_, _kotta_ signify we do not know. He imitates
the barking of the dog with _auauauau_. He says _teine_ for
Steine (stones); calls Braten (roast meat) _paati_ and _paa_,
and Brod (bread) the same. If he hits against anything in
creeping, he immediately says _ba_ (it hurts). If he comes near
a dangerous object, and some one says to him, _ba_, he is on his
guard at once.

A decided step in advance, at the end of the fourteenth month,
is his calling me _Mama_. At sight of me he often cries out, in
a loud voice and in a coaxing tone, _ei-mamma!_ just as he calls
the nurse _ei-niana_. His father he now calls _Papa_, too, but
not until now, although this sound, _papba_, made its appearance
in the tenth month, after which time it was completely
forgotten. His grandmother, as he can not get beyond the _gr_,
is now called simply _grrru_; not until later, _Go-mamma_.

_15th Month._--He now says _Guten Tag_ (good-day), but not
always at the right time; also _Guttag_. He likes to see
pictures, and calls picture-books _ga_ or _gock_, probably
because a good many birds are represented in them. He likes to
have stories told to him, and to have pictures explained or
rather named.

"Hinauf" (up) he calls _ueppa_, e. g., when he is to be lifted
into his chair. For "unten, hinab" (below, down), he says
_patz_. Not long ago he repeated unweariedly _pka, pta_ (pp.
139, 144), _mba, mbwa_.

At this period he begins to raise himself erect, holding on by
chairs and such things.

Of horses he is passionately fond; but he begins to use the word
_koppa_, as the Chinese do their words, in various meanings. He
calls my large gold hair-pins _koppa_. Perhaps in his
imagination they represent horses, as do many other objects also
with which he plays. Berries he now calls _mamma_. He has a
sharp eye for insects, and calls them all _putika_, from the
Esthonian _puttukas_ (beetle), which he has got from the maid.

All large birds in the picture-book he now calls _papa_, the
word being probably derived from _Papagei_ (parrot), which he
also pronounces _papagoi_. The smaller birds are called _gog_
and _gack_.

His image in the glass he calls _titta_ (Esthonian designation
for child, doll). Does he recognize himself in it (p. 196, _et
seq._)?

Once he heard me in the garden calling some one in a loud voice.
He immediately imitated me, and afterward when he was asked
"What does mamma do?" he understood the question at once, put
out his lips, and made the same sound. He is very uneasy in
strange surroundings, in strange places, or among strangers.

My bracelet, too, he now calls _kopita_. _Mann_ is a new word.
_O-patz_ means "playing on the piano," as well as "below, down
there." When the piano is played he sings in a hoarse voice,
with lips protruded, as well as he can, but does not get the
tune. He likes to dance, and always dances in time.

_Nocho_ (noch, yet) is a new word, which he uses much in place
of _mehr_ (more), e. g., when he wants more food.

He often plays with apples, which for this reason, and very
likely because they are round, he calls _Ball_, as he does his
rubber ball. Yesterday he had baked apples, mashed, with milk.
He recognized the apple at once in this altered form, and said
as he ate, _Ball!_ At this time he was not yet sixteen months
old.