CHAPTER XX.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS.

Of all the facts that have been established by me through the

observation of the child in the first years of his life, the _formation

of concepts without language_ is most opposed to the traditional

doctrines, and it is just this on which I lay the greatest stress.

It has been demonstrated that the human being, at the very beginning of

his life, not only distinguishes pleasure and discomfort, but may also

have single, distinct sensations. He behaves on the first day

differently, when the appropriate sense-impressions exist, from what he

does when they are lacking. The first effect of these feelings, these

few sensations, is the association of their traces, left behind in the

central nervous system, with inborn movements. Those traces or central

impressions develop gradually the personal _memory_. These movements are

the point of departure for the primitive activity of the intellect,

which separates the sensations both in time and in space. When the

number of the memory-images, of distinct sensations, on the one hand, on

the other, of the movements that have been associated with them--e. g.,

"sweet" and "sucking"--has become larger, then a firmer association of

sensation-and-movement-memories, i. e., of excitations of sensory and

motor ganglionic cells takes place, so that excitement of the one brings

with it co-excitement of the other. Sucking awakens the recollection of

the sweet taste; the sweet taste of itself causes sucking. This

succession is already a separation _in time_ of two sensations (the

sweet and the motor sensation in sucking). The separation in space

requires the recollection of two sensations, each with one movement; the

distinction between sucking at the left breast and sucking at the right

is made after one trial. With this, the first act of the intellect is

performed, the first perception made, i. e., a sensation first localized

in time and space. The motor sensation of sucking has come, like the

sweet taste, _after_ a similar one, and it has come between two unlike

relations in space that were distinguished. By means of multiplied

perceptions (e. g., luminous fields not well defined, but yet defined)

and multiplied movements with sensations of touch, the perception, after

considerable time, acquires an object; i. e., the intellect, which

already allowed nothing bright to appear without boundary-lines, and

thus allowed nothing bright to appear except in space (whereas at the

beginning brightness, as was the case even later with sound, had no

limitation, no demarcation), begins to assign a cause for that which is

perceived. Hereby perception is raised to _representation_. The

often-felt, localized, sweet, warm, white wetness, which is associated

with sucking, now forms an idea, and one of the earliest ideas. When,

now, this idea has often arisen, the separate perceptions that have been

necessary to its formation are united more and more firmly. Then, when

one of these latter appears for itself, the memory-images of the others

will also appear, through co-excitement of the ganglionic cells

concerned; but this means simply that the _concept_ is now in existence.

For the concept has its origin in the union of attributes. Attributes

are perceived, and the memory-images of them, that is, accordingly,

memory-images of separate perceptions, are so firmly associated that,

where only one appears in the midst of entirely new impressions, the

concept yet emerges, because all the other images appear along with it.

Language is not required for this. Up to this point, those born deaf

behave exactly like infants that have all the senses, and like some

animals that form concepts.

These few first ideas, namely, the individual ideas, or sense-intuitions

that are generated by the first perceptions, and the simple general

ideas (of a lower order), or concepts, arising out of these--the

concepts of the child as yet without language, of microcephali also, of

deaf-mutes, and of the higher animals--have now this peculiarity, that

they have all been formed exactly in this way by the parents and the

grandparents and the representatives of the successive generations (such

notions as those of "food," "breast"). These concepts are not innate;

because no idea can be innate, for the reason that several peripheral

impressions are necessary for the formation of even a single perception.

They are, however, inherited. Just as the teeth and the beard are not

usually innate in man, but come and grow like those of the parents and

are already implanted, piece for piece, in the new-born child, and are

thus hereditary, so the first ideas of the infant, his first concepts,

which arise unconsciously, without volition and without the possibility

of inhibition, in every individual in the same way, must be called

hereditary. Different as are the teeth from the germs of teeth in the

newly-born, so different are the man's concepts, clear, sharply defined

by words, from the child's ill-defined, obscure concepts, which arise

quite independently of all language (of word, look, or gesture).

In this wise the old doctrine of "innate ideas" becomes clear. Ideas or

thoughts are themselves either representations or combinations of

representations. They thus presuppose perceptions, and can not

accordingly be innate, but may some of them be inherited, those, viz.,

which at first, by virtue of the likeness between the brain of the child

and that of the parent, and of the similarity between the external

circumstances of the beginnings of life in child and parent, always

arise in the same manner.

The principal thing is the innate aptitude to perceive things and to

form ideas, i. e., the innate intellect. By aptitude (Anlage), however,

can be understood nothing else at present than a manner of reacting, a

sort of capability or excitability, impressed upon the central organs of

the nervous system after repeated association of nervous excitations

(through a great many generations in the same way).

The brain comes into the world provided with a great number of

impressions upon it. Some of these are quite obscure, some few are

distinct. Each ancestor has added his own to those previously existing.

Among these impressions, finally, the useless ones must soon be

obliterated by those that are useful. On the other hand, deep

impressions will, like wounds, leave behind scars, which abide longer;

and very frequently used paths of connection between different portions

of the brain and spinal marrow and the organs of sense are easier to

travel even at birth (instinctive and reflexive processes).

Now, of all the higher functions of the brain, the ordering one, which

compares the simple, pure sensations, the original experiences, and

first sets them in an order of succession, viz., arranges them in time,

then puts them side by side and one above another, and, not till later,

one behind another, viz., arranges them in space--this function is one

of the oldest. This ordering of the sense-impressions is _an activity of

the intellect that has nothing to do with speech_, and the _capacity_

for it is, as Immanuel Kant discovered, present in man "as he now is"

(Kant) _before_ the activity of the senses begins; but without this

activity it can not assert itself.

Now, I maintain, and in doing so I take my stand upon the facts

published in this book, that just as little as the intellect of the

child not yet able to speak has need of words or looks or gestures, or

any symbol whatever, in order to arrange in time and space the

sense-impressions, so little does that intellect require those means in

order to form concepts and to perform logical operations; and in this

fundamental fact I see the material for bridging over the only great

gulf that separates the child from the brute animal.

That even physiologists deny that there is any passage from one to the

other is shown by Vierordt in his "Physiology of Infancy" (1877).

The fundamental fact that a genuinely logical activity of the brain goes

on without language of any sort, in the adult man who has the faculty of

speech, was discovered by Helmholtz. The logical functions called by him

"unconscious inferences" begin, as I think I have shown by many

observations in the newly-born, immediately with the activity of the

senses. Perception in the third dimension of space is a particularly

clear example of this sort of logical activity without words, because it

is developed slowly.

In place of the expression "unconscious," which, because it has caused

much mischief, still prevents the term "unconscious inferences" from

being naturalized in the physiology of the senses and the theory of

perception, it would be advisable, since "instinctive" and "intuitive"

are still more easily misunderstood, to say "wordless." Wordless ideas,

wordless concepts, wordless judgments, wordless inferences, may be

inherited. To these belong such as our progenitors often experienced at

the beginning of life, such as not only come into existence without the

participation of any medium of language whatever, but also are never

even willed (intended, deliberate, voluntary), and can not under any

circumstances be set aside or altered, whether to be corrected or

falsified. An inherited defect can not be put aside, and neither can the

inherited intellect. When the outer angle at the right of the eye is

pressed upon, a light appears in the closed eye at the left, not at the

right; not at the place touched. This optical illusion, which was known

even in Newton's day, this wordless inductive inference, is hereditary

and incorrigible; and, on the other hand, the hereditary wordless

_concept_ of food can neither be prevented from arising nor be set aside

nor be formed otherwise than it was formed by our ancestors.

Innate, to make it once more prominent, is the faculty (the capacity,

the aptitude, the potential function) of forming concepts, and some of

the first concepts are hereditary. New (not hereditary) concepts arise

only after new perceptions, i. e., after experiences that associate

themselves with the primitive ones by means of new connecting paths in

the brain, and they begin in fact before the learning of speech.

A chick just out of the shell possesses the capacity to lay eggs--the

organs necessary--in fact the future eggs are inborn in the creature;

but only after some time does it lay eggs, and these are in every

respect similar to the first eggs of its mother. Indeed, the chicks that

come from these eggs resemble those of the mother herself; thus the eggs

have hereditary properties. New eggs originate only by crossing, by

external influences of all sorts, influences, therefore, of experience.

So, too, the new-born child possesses the capacity of forming concepts.

The organs necessary for that are inborn in him, but not till after some

time does he form concepts, and these are in all nations and at all

times quite similar to the first concepts formed by the child's mother.

Indeed, the inferences that attach themselves to the first concepts will

resemble those which were developed in the mother or will be identical

with them; these concepts have, then, hereditary properties. New

concepts originate only through experience. They originate in great

numbers in every child that learns to speak.

If the fact that children utterly ignorant of speech, even those born

deaf, already perform logical operations with perfect correctness,

proves the intellect to be independent of language, yet searching

observation of the child that is learning to speak shows that only by

means of verbal language can the intellect give precision to its

primitive indistinct concepts and thereby develop itself further,

connecting ideas appropriately with the circumstances in which the child

lives.

It is a settled fact, however, that many ideas must already be formed in

order to make possible the acquirement of speech. The existence of ideas

is a necessary condition of learning to speak.

The greatest intellectual advance in this field consists in this, that

the specific method of the human race is discovered by the speechless

child--the method of expressing ideas aloud and articulately, i. e., by

means of expirations of breath along with various positions of the

larynx and the mouth and various movements of the tongue. No child

_invents_ this method, it is _transmitted_; but each individual child

_discovers_ that by means of sounds thus originating one can make known

his ideas and thereby induce feelings of pleasure and do away with

discomfort. Therefore he applies himself to this process of himself,

without instruction, provided only that he grows up among speaking

people; and even where hearing, which serves as a means of intercourse

with them, is wanting from birth, a life rich in ideas and an

intelligence of a high order may be developed, provided that written

signs of sound supply the place of sounds heard. These signs, however,

can be learned only by means of instruction. The way in which writing is

learned is the same as the way in which the alalic child learns to

speak. Both rest upon imitation.

I have shown that the first firm association of an idea with a syllable

or with a word-like combination of syllables, takes place exclusively

through imitation; but a union of this sort being once established, the

child then freely invents new combinations, although to a much more

limited extent than is commonly assumed. No one brings with him into the

world a genius of such quality that it would be capable of inventing

articulate speech. It is difficult enough to comprehend that imitation

suffices for the child to learn a language.

What organic conditions are required for the imitation of sounds and for

learning to speak I have endeavored to ascertain by means of a

systematic collection, resting on the best pathological investigations,

of all the disturbances of speech thus far observed in adults; and the

daily observation of a sound child, who was kept away from all training

as far as possible, as well as the frequent observation of other

children, has brought me to the following important result:

That every known form of disturbance of speech in adults finds its

perfect counterpart in the child that is learning to speak.

The child can not _yet_ speak correctly, because his impressive,

central, and expressive organs of speech are not yet completely

developed. The adult patient can _no longer_ speak correctly, because

those parts are no longer complete or capable of performing their

functions. The parallelism is perfect even to individual cases, if

children of various ages are carefully observed in regard to their

acquirement of speech. As to facts of a more general nature, we arrive,

then, at the three following:

1. The normal infant understands spoken language much earlier than he

can himself produce through imitation the sounds, syllables, and words

he hears.

2. The normal child, however, before he begins to speak or to imitate

correctly the sounds of language, forms of his own accord all or nearly

all the sounds that occur in his future speech and very many others

besides, and delights in doing it.

3. The order of succession in which the sounds of speech are produced by

the infant is different with different individuals, and consequently is

not determined by the principle of the least effort. It is dependent

upon several factors--brain, teeth, size of the tongue, acuteness of

hearing, motility, and others. Only in the later, intentional,

sound-formations and attempts at speaking does that principle come under

consideration.

In the acquirement of every complicated muscular movement, dancing,

e. g., the difficult combinations which make a greater strain on the

activity of the will are in like manner acquired last.

Heredity plays no part in this, for every child can learn to master

perfectly any language, provided he hears from birth only the one to be

learned. The plasticity of the inborn organs of speech is thus in the

earliest childhood very great.

To follow farther the influence that the use of speech as a means of

understanding has upon the intellectual development of the child lies

outside the problem dealt with in this book. Let me, in conclusion,

simply give a brief estimate of the questioning-activity that makes its

appearance very early after the first attempts at speech, and also add a

few remarks on the development of the _"I"-feeling_.

The child's questioning as a means of his culture is almost universally

underrated. The interest in causality that unfolds itself more and more

vigorously with the learning of speech, the asking why, which is often

almost unendurable to parents and educators, is fully justified, and

ought not, as unfortunately is too often the case, to be unheeded,

purposely left unanswered, purposely answered falsely. I have from the

beginning given to my boy, to the best of my knowledge invariably, an

answer to his questions intelligible to him and not contrary to truth,

and have noticed that in consequence at a later period, in the fifth and

the sixth and especially in the seventh year, the questions prove to be

more and more intelligent, because the previous answers are retained.

If, on the contrary, we do not answer at all, or if we answer with jests

and false tales, it is not to be wondered at that a child even of

superior endowments puts foolish and absurd questions and thinks

illogically--a thing that rarely occurs where questions are rightly

answered and fitting instruction is given, to say nothing of rearing the

child to superstition. The only legend in which I allow my boy to have

firm faith is that of the stork that brings new babes, and what goes

along with that.

With regard to the development of the "I"--feeling the following holds

good:

This feeling does not awake on the day when the child uses for the

first time the word "I" instead of his own name--the date of such

use varies according as those about it name themselves and the child

by the proper name and not by the pronoun for a longer or a shorter

period; but the "I" is separated from the "not-I" after a long

series of experiences, chiefly of a painful sort, as these

observations have made clear, through the _becoming accustomed to

the parts of one's own body_. These, which at first are foreign

objects, affect the child's organs of sense always in the same

manner, and thereby become uninteresting after they have lost the

charm of novelty. Now, his own body is that to which the attractive

objective impressions (i. e., the world) are referred, and with the

production by him of new impressions, with the changes wrought by

him (in the experimenting which is called "playing"), with the

experience of being-a-cause, is developed more and more in the child

the feeling of self. With this he raises himself higher and higher

above the dependent condition of the animal, so that at last the

difference, not recognizable at all before birth and hardly

recognizable at the beginning after birth, between animal and human

being attains a magnitude dangerous for the latter, attains it,

above all, by means of language.

But if it is necessary for the child to appropriate to himself as

completely as possible this highest privilege of the human race and

through this to overcome the animal nature of his first period; if his

development requires the stripping off of the remains of the animal and

the unfolding of the responsible "I"--then it will conduce to the

highest satisfaction of the thinking man, at the summit of his

experience of life, to go back in thought to his earliest childhood, for

that period teaches him plainly that he himself has his origin in

nature, is intimately related to all other living creatures. However far

he gets in his development, he is ever groping vainly in the dark for a

door into another world; but the very fact of his reflecting upon the

possibility of such a door shows how high the developed human being

towers above all his fellow-beings.

The key to the understanding of the great enigma, how these extremes are

connected, is furnished in the history of the development of the mind of

the child.

APPENDIXES.

A.

COMPARATIVE OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE ACQUIREMENT OF SPEECH BY GERMAN

AND FOREIGN CHILDREN.

Among the earlier as among the later statements concerning the

acquirement of speech, there are several that have been put forth by

writers on the subject without a sufficient basis of observed facts. Not

only Buffon, but also Taine and his successors, have, from a few

individual cases, deduced general propositions which are not of general

application.

Good observations were first supplied in Germany by Berthold Sigismund

in his pamphlet, "Kind und Welt" ("The Child and the World") (1856); but

his observations were scanty.

He noted, as the first articulate sounds made by a child from Thueringen

(Rudolstadt), _ma_, _ba_, _bu_, _appa_, _ange_, _anne_, _brrr_, _arrr_:

these were made about the middle of the first three months.

Sigismund is of the opinion that this first lisping, or babbling,

consists in the production of syllables with only two sounds, of which

the consonant is most often the first; that the first consonants

distinctly pronounced are labials; that the lips, brought into activity

by sucking, are the first organs of articulation; but this conjecture

lacks general confirmation.

In the second three months (in the case of one child in the twenty-third

week, with other healthy children considerably earlier) were heard, for

the first time, the loud and high _crowing_-sounds, uttered by the child

spontaneously, jubilantly, with lively movements of the limbs that

showed the waxing power of the muscles: the child seemed to take

pleasure in making the sounds. The utterance of syllables, on the other

hand, is at this period often discontinued for weeks at a time.

In the third quarter of the first year, the lisping or stammering was

more frequent. New sounds were added: _bae_, _fbu_, _fu_; and the

following were among those that were repeated without cessation,

_baebaebae_, _daedaedae_; also _adad_, _eded_.

In the next three months the child manifested his satisfaction in any

object by the independent sound _ei_, _ei_. The first imitations of

sounds, proved to be such, were made after the age of eleven months. But

it is more significant, for our comprehension of the process of learning

to speak, that long before the boy tried to imitate words or gestures,

viz., at the age of nine months, he distinguished accurately the words

"father, mother, light, window, moon, lane"; for he looked, or pointed,

at the object designated, as soon as one of these words was spoken.

And when, finally, imitation began, musical tones, e. g., F, C, were

imitated sooner than the spoken sounds, although the former were an

octave higher. And the _ei_, _ei_ was repeated in pretty nearly the same

tone or accent in which it had been pronounced for the child. Sneezing

was not imitated till after fourteen months. The first word imitated by

the child of his own accord (after fourteen months) was the cry

"Neuback" (fresh-bake), as it resounded from the street; it was given

back by the child, unsolicited, as _ei-a_. As late as the sixteenth

month he replied to the word _papa_, just as he did to the word _Ida_,

only with _atta_; yet he had in the mean time learned to understand

"lantern, piano, stove, bird, nine-pin, pot"--in all, more than twenty

words--and to indicate by a look the objects named; he had also learned

to make the new imperfect sounds _pujeh_, _pujeh_, _tupe tupe teh_,

_aemmaem_, _atta_, _ho_.

In the seventeenth month came in place of these sounds the babbled

syllables _maem_, _mam_, _mad-am_, _a-dam_, _das_; in the case of other

children, syllables different from these. Children often say several

syllables in quick succession, "then suddenly stop as if they were

thinking of something new--actually strain, as if they must exert

themselves to bring their organs to utterance, until at last a new sound

issues, and then this is repeated like the clack of a mill." Along with

this appears the frequent doubling of syllables, as in _papa_, _mama_.

The boy, at twenty months, told his father the following, with pretty

long pauses and animated gestures:

_atten--beene--titten--bach--eine--puff--anna_, i. e., "Wir waren im

Garten, haben Beeren und Kirschen gegessen, und in den Bach Steine

geworfen; dann kam Anna" (we were in the garden, ate berries and

cherries, and threw stones into the brook; then Anna came).

The observations of Sigismund are remarkable for their objectivity,

their clearness of exposition, and their accuracy, and they agree with

mine, as may easily be seen, in many respects perfectly. Unfortunately,

this excellent observer (long since deceased) did not finish his work.

The first part only has appeared. Moreover, the statements as to the

date of the first imitations (see pp. 83, 108, 109, 118, 121) are not

wholly in accord with one another.

I. E. Loebisch, likewise a physician, in his "Entwickelungsgeschichte der

Seele des Kindes" ("History of the Development of the Mind of the

Child," Vienna, 1851, p. 68), says: "Naturally the first sound formed in

the mouth, which is more or less open, while the other organs of speech

are inactive, is the sound resembling _a_, which approximates sometimes

more, sometimes less, nearly to the _e_ and the _o_.[D]

"Of the consonants the first are those formed by closing and opening the

lips: _m_, _b_, _p_; these are at first indistinct and not decidedly

differentiated till later; then the _m_ naturally goes not only before

the _a_ but also after it; _b_ and _p_ for a long time merely commence a

syllable, and rarely close one until other consonants also have been

formed. A child soon says _pa_, but certainly does not say _ab_ until he

can already pronounce other consonants also (p. 79).

"The order in which the sounds are produced by the child is the

following: Of the vowels, first _a_, _e_, _o_, _u_, of course not well

distinguished from _a_ at the beginning; the last vowel is _i_. Of the

consonants, _m_ is the first, and it passes by way of the _w_ into _b_

and _p_. But here we may express our astonishment that so many writers

on the subject of the order of succession of the consonants in the

development of speech have assigned so late a date to the formation of

the _w_; Schwarz puts it even after _t_, and before _r_ and _s_. Then

come _d_, _t_; then _l_ and _n_; _n_ is easily combined with _d_ when it

precedes _d_; next _f_ and the gutturals _h_, _ch_, _g_, _k_, the _g_

and _k_ often confounded with _d_ and _t_. _S_ and _r_ are regarded as

nearly simultaneous in their appearance; the gutturals as coming later,

the latest of them being _ch_. Still, there is a difference in this

respect in different children. For many produce a sound resembling _r_

among the first consonant sounds; so too _ae_, _oe_, _ue_; the diphthongs

proper do not come till the last."

These statements of Loebisch, going, as they do, far beyond pure

observation, can not all be regarded as having general validity. For

most German children, at least, even those first adduced can scarcely

claim to be well founded.

H. Taine (in the supplement to his book on "Intelligence," which

appeared in a German translation in 1880) noted, as expressions used by

a French child in the fifteenth month, _papa_, _maman_, _tete_ (nurse,

evidently a word taken from the word _teter_, "to nurse or suck at the

breast"), _oua-oua_ (dog, in all probability a word said for the child

to repeat), _koko_ (cock, no doubt from _coq-coq_, which had been said

for the child), _dada_ (horse, carriage, indicating other objects also,

no doubt; a demonstrative word, as it is with many German children).

_Tem_ was uttered without meaning for two weeks; then it signified

"give, take, look, pay attention." I suspect that we have here a

mutilation of the strongly accentuated _tiens_, which had probably been

often heard. As early as the fourteenth month, _ham_ signified "I want

to eat" (_hamm_, then _am_, might have had its origin in the echo of

_faim, as-tu faim?_ (are you hungry?)). At the age of three and a half

months this child formed only vowels, according to the account; at

twelve months she twittered and uttered first _m-m_, then _kraaau_,

_papa_, with varying intonation, but spoke no word with a recognizable

meaning. In the tenth month there was an understanding of some

questions. For the child, when asked "Where is grandpapa?" smiled at the

portrait of the grandfather, but not at the one of the grandmother,

which was not so good a likeness. In the eleventh month, at the

question "Where is mamma?" the child would turn toward her mother, and

in like manner toward the father at the question, "papa"?

A second child observed by Taine made utterances that had intellectual

significance in the seventh week, for the first time. Up to the age of

five months _ah_, _gue_, _gre_ (French) were heard; in the seventh

month, also _ata_, _ada_.

In his reflections, attached to these and a few other observations of

his own, Taine rightly emphasizes the great power of generalization and

the peculiarity the very young child had of associating with words it

had heard other notions than those common with us; but he ascribes too

much to the child's inventive genius. The child guesses more than it

discovers, and the very cases adduced (_hamm_, _tem_), on which he lays

great weight, may be traced, as I remarked above parenthetically, to

something heard by the child; this fact he seems to have himself quite

overlooked. It is true, that in the acquirement of speech _one_ word may

have several different meanings in succession, as is especially the case

with the word _bebe_ (corresponding to the English word _baby_), almost

universal with French children; it is not true that a child without

imitation of sounds invents a word with a fixed meaning, and that, with

no help or suggestion from members of the family, it employs its

imperfectly uttered syllables (Lallsylben) consistently for designating

its ideas.

Among the notes of Wyma concerning an English child ("The Mental

Development of the Infant of To-day," in the "Journal of Psychological

Medicine and Mental Pathology," vii, Part I, pp. 62-69, London, April,

1881), the following, relating to the acquisition of speech, are to be

mentioned:

At five months the child began to use a kind of language, consisting of

six words, to indicate a desire or intention. _Ning_ signified desire

for milk, and was employed for that up to the age of two years. (The

word may possibly have been derived from the word _milk_,[E] frequently

heard.) At nine months the child made use of the words _pretty things_

for animals; at ten months it formed many small sentences.

The child practiced itself in speaking, even without direct imitation of

words just spoken, for at the age of two years it began to say over a

number of nursery rhymes that nobody in the house knew, and that could

not have been learned from other children, because the child had no

intercourse with such. At a later period the child declared that the

rhymes had been learned from a former nurse, whom it had not seen for

nearly three months. Thus the articulation was perfecting itself for

weeks before it was understood. The exercises of the child sounded like

careless reading aloud.

The book of Prof. Ludwig Struempell, of Leipsic, "Psychologische

Paedagogik" (Leipsic, 1880, 368 pages), contains an appendix, "Notizen

ueber die geistige Entwickelung eines weiblichen Kindes waehrend der

ersten zwei Lebensjahre" ("Notes on the Mental Development of a Female

Child during the First Two Years of Life"); in this are many

observations that relate to the learning of speech. These are from the

years 1846 and 1847.

In the tenth week, _ah! ah!_ was an utterance of joy; in the thirteenth,

the child sings, all alone; in the nineteenth comes the guttural

utterance, _grrr_, but no consonant is assigned to this period. In the

first half-year are heard distinctly, in the order given, _ei_, _aga_,

_eigei_, _ja_, _ede_, _dede_, _eds_, _edss_, _emme_, _meme_, _nene_,

_nein_. In the eighth month, there is unmistakable understanding of what

is said; e. g., "Where is the tick-tack?" In the ninth, _am_, _amme_,

_ap_, _pap_, are said; she sings vowels that are sung for her. In the

eleventh month, imitation of sounds is frequent, _kiss_, _kiss_; at

sight of the tea-kettle, _ssi_, _ssi_; she knows all the people in the

house; calls the birds by the strange name _tibu_. Echolalia. In the

fourteenth month, needles are called _tick_ (_stich_ = prick or stitch).

To the question, "Where is Emmy?" the child points, correctly, to

herself; says distinctly, _Kopf_ (head), _Buch_ (book), _roth_ (red),

_Tante_ (aunt), _gut_ (good), _Mann_ (man), _Baum_ (tree); calls the eye

(Auge) _ok_, Pruscinsky _prrti_, the dog _uf, uf_. In the seventeenth

month, simple sentences are spoken; she speaks to herself. In the

nineteenth month, she calls herself by her name, and counts _twei_,

_drei_, _uempf_, _exe_, _ibene_, _atte_, _neune_ (zwei, drei, fuenf,

sechs, sieben, acht, neun--2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9); in the twenty-second

month, she talks a good deal to herself, and makes very rapid progress

in the correct use of words and the formation of sentences.

From the diary kept by Frau von Struempell concerning this daughter and a

sister of this one, and kindly placed at my disposal in the original, I

take the following notes: In the eighth month, _mamma_, in the tenth,

_papa_, without meaning. In the eleventh month, the child's

understanding of what is said to her is surprising, and so is her

imitation. To "Guten Tag" (good-day) she responds, _tata_; to "Adieu,"

_adaa_. A book, which the child likes to turn the leaves of, she calls

_ade_ (for a b c). The first certain association of a sound learned with

a concept seems to be that of the _ee_, which has often been said to

her, with wet, or with what is forbidden. _Amme am_ _om_, "Amme komm"

(nurse come) (both imitative), is most frequently repeated, _papa_

seldom. The _r_ guttural, or rattled, is imperfectly imitated. In the

thirteenth month, the little girl says, _tippa tappa_, when she wants to

be carried, and responds _te te_ to "steh! steh" (stop)! She now calls

the book _a-be-te_ (for a b c). Pigeons she calls _kurru_; men, in the

picture-book, _mann mann_. When some one asked, "Where is the brush?"

the child made the motion of brushing. To the questions, "Where is your

ear, your tooth, nose, hand, your fingers, mamma's ear, papa's nose?"

etc., she points correctly to the object. On her mother's coming into

the room, _mamam_; her father's, _papap_. When the nurse is gone, _amme

om, amme am_. The mother asked some one, "Do you hear?" and the child

looked at her and took hold of her own ears. To the question, "How do we

eat?" she makes the motion of eating. She says _nein_ when she means to

refuse. "Dank" (thank) is pronounced _dakkn_. "Bitte" (I beg, or please)

is correctly pronounced. She understands the meaning of spoon, dress,

mirror, mouth, plate, drink, and many other words, and likes to hear

stories, especially when they contain the words already known to her. In

the fifteenth month "Mathilde" is given by her as _tilda_ and _tida_. At

sight of a faded bouquet she said _blom_ (for Blume, flower). She says

everything that is said to her, though imperfectly; produces the most

varied articulate sounds; says _ta, papa, ta_ when she hands anything to

a person; calls the foot (Fuss) _pss_, lisping and thrusting out the

tongue. She often says _omama_ and _opapa_. In the seventeenth month,

Ring is called _ning_, Wagen (carriage), _uagen_, Sophie, _dsofi_, Olga,

_olla_ krank (ill), _kank_, Pflaume (plum), _pluma_, satt (satisfied, as

to hunger), _datt_, Haende-waschen (washing the hands), _ander-uaschen_,

Schuh and Tuch (shoe and cloth), _tu_, Strumpf (stocking), _tumpf_, Hut

(hat), _ut_, Suppe (soup), _duppe_. _Mama kum bild dat bank_, is for

"Mama komm, ich habe das Bilderbuch, erzaehle mir dazu etwas, dort setz'

Dich zu mir" (M., come, I have the picture-book; tell me something in

it; sit there by me). In the eighteenth month, "Where is Omama?" is

answered with _im garten_; "How are Omama and Opapa?" with _sund_ (for

gesund, well); "What is Omama doing?" with _naeht_ (she is sewing). The

black Apollo is called _pollo wurz_ (schwarz, black).

The sister of this child, in the tenth month, applied the word _mama_ to

her mother, _pap pap_ and _papap_ to her father, but was less sure in

this; _tj[=e]-t[=e]_ were favorite syllables. When asked, "Where is

Tick-tack?" she looks at the clock on the wall. A piercing scream is an

utterance of joy. In the fifteenth month, _Apapa_ is her word for

grandfather, and is roguishly used for grandmother. She says _aben_ for

"haben" (have), _tatta_ for "Tante" (aunt), _apa_ (for _uppa_) means "I

want to go up." Her imitation of what is said is very imperfect, but her

understanding of it is surprising. In the nineteenth month she makes

much use of her hands in gesture instead of speaking. _Kuker_ is her

word for "Zucker" (sugar), _bildebu_ for "Bilderbuch" (picture-book).

But she habitually calls a book _omama_ or _opapa_ (from the letters of

her grandparents). Clara is pronounced _clala_, Christine, _titine_. In

the twentieth month, her mother, after telling her a story, asked, "Who,

pray, is this, I?" and the child replied, "_Mamma"_ "And who is that,

you?" "_Bertha, Bertha_" (the child's name) was the answer. At this

period she said, _Bertha will_; also _paren_ (for fahren, drive),

_pallen_ (fallen, fall), _bot_, (Brot, bread), _atig_ (artig, good,

well-behaved), _mal_ (noch einmal, once more), _muna_ (Mund, mouth),

_aujen_ (Augen, eyes), _ol_ (Ohr, ear), _tirn_ (Stirn, forehead),

_wanne_ (Wange, cheek, and Wanne, bath-tub), _aua_ (August), _dute_

(gute) _mama_, _paesche_ (Equipage), _wasar tinken_ (Wasser trinken,

drink water) _dabel_ (Gabel, fork), _luessel_ (Schluessel, key), _is nits_

(ist nichts, is nothing), _mula_ (Milch, milk), _ass_ (heiss, hot).

Another remarkable observation is the following from the fifteenth

month. It reminds one of the behavior of hypnotized adults. On her

grandmother's birthday the child said some rhymes that she did not

easily remember (there were six short verses, thirty-four words). One

night soon after the birthday festival the little girl said off the

verses, "almost for the first time without any stumbling, in her sleep."

From this we see how much more quickly in regard to articulation and

independent use of words both these girls (the first of whom weighed

only six pounds at birth) learned to speak than did Sigismund's boy, my

own boy, and others.

Darwin observed (_A Biographical Sketch of an Infant_ in "Mind, a

Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy," July, 1877, pp. 285-294)

in a son of his, on the forty-seventh day of his life, a formation of

sounds without meaning. The child took pleasure in it. The sounds soon

became manifold. In the sixth month he uttered the sound _da_ without

any meaning; but in the fifth he probably began to try to imitate

sounds. In the tenth month the imitation of sounds was unmistakable. In

the twelfth he could readily imitate all sorts of actions, such as

shaking his head and saying "Ah." He also understood intonations,

gestures, several words, and short sentences. When exactly seven months

old, the child associated his nurse with her name, so that when it was

called out he would look round for her. In the thirteenth month the boy

used gestures to explain his wishes; for instance, he picked up a bit

of paper and gave it to his father, pointing to the fire, as he had

often seen and liked to see paper burned. At exactly the age of a year

he called food _mum_, which also signified "Give me food," and he used

this word instead of beginning to cry as formerly. This word with

affixes signified particular things to eat; thus _shu-mum_ signified

sugar, and a little later licorice was called _black-shu-mum_. When

asking for food by the word _mum_ he gave to it a very strongly marked

tone of longing (Darwin says an "interrogatory sound," which should mean

the same thing). It is remarkable that my child also, and in the tenth

week for the first time, said _moemm_ when he was hungry, and that a

child observed by Fritz Schultze (Dresden) said _maem-maem_. Probably the

syllable has its origin from the primitive syllable _ma_ and from

hearing the word "mamma" when placed at the breast of the mother.

Of the facts communicated by the physiologist Vierordt concerning the

language of the child ("Deutsche Revue" of January, 1879, Berlin, pp.

29-46) should be mentioned this, that a babe in its second month

expressed pleasure by the vowel _a_, the opposite feeling by _ae_. This

is true of many other children also. In the third and fourth months the

following syllables were recognizable: _mam_, _aemma_, _fu_, _pfu_,

_ess_, _aeng_, _angka_, _acha_, _erra_, _hab_. A lisping babe said,

countless times, _hab_, _hob_, _ha_. These syllables coincide in part

with those given by other observers. The _pf_ and _ss_ only have not

been heard by me at this age, and I doubt whether _f_, for which teeth

are needed, was produced with purity so early. In the second and third

years a child pronounced the following words: _beb_ (for boes, naughty);

_bebe_ (Besen, _beesann_, broom); _webbe_ (Wasser, _watja_, water);

_wewe_ (Loewe, _loewee_, lion); _ewebau_ (Elephant, _elafant_); _webenau_

(Fledermaus, _lebamaunz_, bat); _babaube_ (Blasebalg, _ba-abats_,

bellows); _ade_ (Hase, hare); _emele_ (Schemel, footstool); _gigod_

(Schildkroete, tortoise).

These examples illustrate very well the mogilalia and paralalia that

exist in every child, but with differences in each individual.

Sigmatism and parasigmatism and paralambdacism are strongly marked.

At the same time the influence of dialect is perceptible (Tuebingen).

The pronunciations given in parentheses in the above instances were

regularly used by my boy in his twenty-sixth month when he saw the

pictures of the objects named in his picture-book. (In Jena.) One

would not suppose beforehand that _watja_ and _webbe_ have the same

meaning. From the ten examples may be seen, further, that _f_, _l_,

_r_, _s_, _t_ present more difficulties of articulation than _b_,

_w_, _m_, _g_, and _d_; but neither must this be made a general

conclusion. The _w_ (on account of the teeth) regularly comes later

than the _b_, _m_, and _r_.

In the third year Vierordt noted down the following narration. I put in

brackets the words omitted by the child:

_id. mama ... papa gaege_ [Es] ist [eine] mama [und ein] papa

gewesen

_unn die habe wai didi gabt_ und diese haben zwei Kinder gehabt,

_unn, didi ... waud._ und [die] Kinder [sind in den] Wald

[gegangen]

_unn habe ohd duh_ und haben Holz geholt;

_na ... an e gugeeide guju_ dann [sind sie] an ein Zuckerhaeuschen

gegangen

_unn habe gaeg_ und haben gegessen;

_no ad die egg gag_ dann hat die Hexe gesagt:

_naeg naeg neidi_ "Nucker, Nucker Neisle

_wie. immi. eidi_ wer [krabbelt] mir am Hauesle?"

_no habe die didi gag_ dann haben die Kinder gesagt:

_die wid, de immi immi wid_ ["Der Wind, der Wind, das himmlische

Kind"] Der Wind, der himmlische,

himmlische Wind.

(There were once a mama and a papa, and they had two children.

And the children went into the woods and fetched wood. Then

they came to a little sugar house and ate. Then the witch said:

"Nucker, Nucker Neisle, who is crawling in my little house?"

Then the children said: "The wind, the wind, the heavenly

child"--The wind, the heavenly, heavenly wind.)

I told the same story to my boy for the first time when he was two years

and eighteen days old. He repeated, with an effort:

_Ess ets aine mama unn ain papa edam (wesen)._

_unn (unt) diesa abn wais (twai) kinna (tinder) ghatf (dehappt)._

_unn die kinna sint (dsint) in den walt tegang (gangen)._

_unn-daben (habn) holz (olz) geh[=o]l (ohlt)._

_dann sint (dsint) sie an ain utsom-haendom (zuke-haeussn) zezan

(gangn)._

_unn (unt) habn (abn) ge ... (dessen)._

_dann hatt die hetse (hekksee) dsa (tsakt)._

_nanuck (nuke nuke) nana nainle (naisle)._

_wer ... (drabbelt) mir am haeultje (aeusle)._

_dann baben (habn) die ... (tinder) ze-a (dsagt)._

_der wi[)e]ds (wind) ... (der fint)._

_ds[=e]r wenn daz (das) himmelae (immlis) khint (tint)._

Where the periods are, his attempts were all vain. At any rate, he would

say _pta-pta_ as he usually did in fruitless efforts at imitating

sounds. Just two months after these first attempts, the same child

recited for me the narrative, using the expressions in the parentheses;

this indicated a distinct progress in articulation. A year after the

first attempt, he easily repeated the whole, with only a single error.

He still said _himmelae_, and then _himmliss_, for "himmlische."

A third boy (Duesseldorf) repeated the narrative much better, as early as

his twenty-fifth month. He made only the following errors, which were

noted by his mother, and kindly communicated by her to me:

_gewesa_ for gewesen

_gehat_ " gehabt

_gehat_ }

_gehakt_ } " gesagt

_gegannen_ " gegangen

_hamen_ " haben

_hind hie_ " sind sie

_kabbell_ " krabbelt

_himmli-he_ " himmlische

_fai_ " zwei

_kinner_ " kinder

_wlad_ " Wald

_hol-l-l-t_ " Holz

_uckerhaeussen_ " Zuckerhaeuschen

_hekes_ " Hexe

_neissel_ " neisle

_haeussel_ " Haeusle

The _ss_ between two vowels was imperfect, reminding one of the English

"th" and the German "sch" and "s." The child could not at this time be

brought to learn by heart.

We see, from these three versions, how unequal the capacity for

articulation is in its development, and how varied it is in regard to

the omission of difficult consonants and the substitution of others in

place of them, as well as in regard to transposition, e. g., in _wand_,

_walt_, _wlad_ (Wald), _wenn_, _wid_, _wi[)e]ds_, _fint_ (Wind)--and

this even in the same individual.

As no one thus far has instituted comparisons of this sort, one more

example may be given. The verses taught by Sigismund to his child (for

whom I use the sign S) of twenty-one months, were often repeated by my

boy (A), of twenty-five months, to me, and by the boy from Duesseldorf

(D), in his twenty-fifth month, to his mother:

S. A D.

[_______________________]

21st month. 25th month. 27th month. 25th month.

Guter tute tuten tuter guter

Mond bohnd monn mond Mund

Du gehst du tehz du gehts du dehst du gehs

so stille so tinne so tilte so tille ho tille

durch die duch die durch die durch die durch die

Abendwolken aten-bonten aben-woltn abendwolkn abehtwolken

him in in in hin

gehst so tehz so gehts so dehst so gehs so

traurig tautech (atich) treuja trauig terauhig

und ich und ich unn ich und ich und ich

fuehle buene felam fuehle fuehle

dass ich dass ich dess ich dass ich dass ich

ohne Ruhe one ule ohno ruhge ohne ruhe ohni ruhe

bin bin bin bin bin

Guter tute hotten tuter guter

Mond bohnd mohn mond mond

du darfst du atz du dafp du darfst du darf

es wissen es bitten es witsen es wissen es wissen

weil du so bein du so leil du so weil du so weil du ho

verschwiegen bieten wereidsam verwiegen werwiegen

bist bitz bits bist bits

warum amum wa-um warum wahum

meine meine meine meinhe meine

Thraenen taenen taenen thraenen taenen

fliessen bieten flietjam fliessen fliessen

und mein und mein und mein und mein und mein

Herz so aetz so hetz so erst so hetz ho

traurig ist atich iz treutjam its trauig ist taudig ist

Errors 24 26 13 18

The errors are very unlike, and are characteristic for each child. The

fact that in the case of A the errors diminished by half within two

months is to be explained by frequency of recitation. I may add that the

inclination to recite was so often lacking that a good deal of pains was

required to bring the child to it.

From the vocabulary of the second year of the child's life, according

to the observations of Sigismund and myself, the following words of

frequent use are also worthy of notice:

[ Vater Mutter Anna Milch Kuh Pferd

| (father) (mother) (milk) (cow) (horse)

S. | _atte_ _amme_ _anne_ _minne_ _muh_ _hotto_

| _aette_ _aemme_ _dodo_

| _tate_ _aemmaem_ _paed_

| _fatte_ _maemme_

[ _matte_

{_va-ata_ _mama_ _anna_ _mimi_ _mumuh_ _otto_

P. {_papa_ _mukuh_ _pfowed_

{ _fowid_

Vogel Mund Nase Ohr Haare Finger Da

(bird) (mouth) (nose) (ear) (hair) (there)

S. _piep-piep_ _mund_ _ase_ _ohn_ _ale_ _finne_ _da_

P. _piep_, _pipiep_ _mum_ _nane_ _o-a_ _ha-i_ {finge _da_

{wi-er

Adieu Guten Tag Fort Ja Nein

(good-day) (away) (yes) (no)

S. _ade_ _tag_ _fot_ _ja_ _nein_

P. _adjee_ _tatach_ _wott_ _ja_; _jaja_ _neinein_

Grossmutter Kuk Zucker Karl Grete

(grandmother) (sugar)

{_tosutte_ _o-tute_ _zucke_ _all_ _ete_

S. {_abutte_

{_osmutte_

P. {_a-mama_ _kuk_ _ucka_ _kara_ _dete_

{_e-mama_

Sigismund noticed the following names of animals (in imitation of words

given to the children): _bae_, _put_, _gikgak_, _waekwaek_, _huhu_, _ihz_

(Hinz). I did not find these with my child. Sigismund likewise observed

_baie-baie_ for Wiege (cradle), which my child was not acquainted with;

_paepae_ for verborgen (hidden); _eichoenten_ for Eichhoernchen (squirrel);

_aepften_ for Aepfelchen (little apple); _maedsen_ and _maedis_ for Maedchen

(girl); _atatt_ for Bernhard; _hundis_ for Hundchen, the Thueringian form

of Huendchen (little dog); _pot_ for Topf (pot); _dot_ for dort (yonder).

On the other hand, both children used _wehweh_ for Schmerz (pain);

_caput_ for zerbrochen (broken to pieces); _schoos_, _sooss_ for "auf

den Schooss moecht ich" (I want to get up in the lap); _auf_ for "hinauf

moechte ich gehoben werden" (I want to be taken up); _toich_ for Storch

(stork); _tul_ for Stuhl (chair). A third child in my presence called

his grandmother _mama-mama_, i. e., twice-mamma, in distinction from the

mother. This, however, does not necessarily imply a gift for invention,

as the expression "Mamma's Mamma" may have been used of the grandmother

in speaking to the child.

Other children of the same age do very much the same. The boy D, though

he repeated cleverly what was said, was not good at naming objects when

he was expected to do this of himself. He would say, e. g., _pilla_ for

Spiegel (mirror). At this same period (twenty-five months) he could not

yet give the softened or liquid sound of consonants (mouilliren). He

said _n_ and _i_ and _a_ very plainly, and also _i-a_, but not _nja_,

and not once "ja"; but, on the contrary, always turned away angrily when

his father or I, or others, required it of him. But as late as the

twenty-eighth month echolalia was present in the highest degree in this

very vigorous and intelligent child, for he would at times repeat

mechanically the last word of every sentence spoken in his hearing, and

even a single word, e. g., when some one asked "Warum?" (why) he

likewise said _warum_ without answering the question, and he continued

to do it for days again and again in a vacant way, with and without the

tone of interrogation (which he did not understand). From this we see

again plainly that the imitation of sounds is independent of the

understanding of them, but is dependent on the functions of

articulation.

These functions are discussed by themselves in the work of Prof. Fritz

Schultze, of Dresden, "Die Sprache des Kindes" ("The Language of the

Child," Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the

"principle of the least effort." He thinks the child begins with the

sounds that are made with the least physiological effort, and proceeds

gradually to the more difficult sounds, i. e., those which require more

"labor of nerve and muscle." This "law" is nothing else than the "loi du

moindre effort" which is to be traced back to Maupertuis, and which was

long ago applied to the beginnings of articulation in children: e. g.,

by Buffon in 1749 ("Oeuvres completes," Paris, 1844, iv, pp. 68, 69),

and, in spite of Littre, again quite recently by B. Perez[F] ("Les trois

premieres Annees de l'Enfant," Paris, 1878, pp. 228-230, _seq._) But

this supposed "law" is opposed by many facts which have been presented

in this chapter and the preceding one. The impossibility of determining

the degree of "physiological effort" required for each separate sound in

the child, moreover, is well known. Besides, every sound may be produced

with very unequal expenditure of force; but the facts referred to are

enough for refutation of the theory. According to Schultze, e. g., the

vowels ought, in the process of development of the child's speech, to

appear in the following order, separated in time by long intervals: 1.

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.

_16th Month._--He is often heard to beg, or rather order, _Mamma

opatz_ (play the piano). If I do not at once obey, he moves his

little hands like a piano-player and begs _tatata_, _tatata_,

imitating the music. He likes also to hear songs sung, and can

already tell some of them, as _Gigagack_, _kucka_ _tralla_. He

joins in singing the last of these.

_17th Month._--He speaks his own name correctly, and when asked

"Where is Adolph?" he points to his breast. As he is always

addressed in the third person, i. e., by his name, he does not

know any personal pronouns.

The syllable _ei_ he often changes to _al_; e. g., he says

_Papagal_ instead of "Papagei."

He had some grapes given to him for the first time, and he at

once called them _mammut_ (berries). Being asked, "How do you

like them?" he pressed his hand on his heart in an ecstasy of

delight that was comical, crying _ach! ach!_

_18th Month._--He comprehends and answers questions; e. g.,

"Where are you going?" _Zu Tuhl_ (to the chair). "What is that?"

_Bett tuddu_, i. e., a bed for sleeping. "Who gave you this?"

_Mamma_, _Pappa_.

He can now say almost any word that is said to him, often

mutilating it; but, if pains be taken to repeat it for him, he

pronounces it correctly. He often tacks on the syllable _ga_, as

if in endearment, _mammaga_, _pappaga_, _nianiaga_. The _forming

of sentences is also beginning_, for he joins two words

together, e. g., _Mamma kommt_ (comes), _Papa gut_ (good),

_Ferd_ (for _Pferd_) _halt_ (horse stop). He says _wiebacka_ for

Zwieback (biscuit), _Brati_ for Braten (roast meat), Goossmama

for Grossmama (grandmamma). He pronounces correctly "Onkel Kuno,

Suppe, Fuchs, Rabe, Kameel."

When others are conversing in his presence, he often says to

himself the words he hears, especially the last words in the

sentence. The word "Nein" (no) he uses as a sign of refusal;

e. g., "Will you have some roast meat?" _Nein_. _Ja_ (yes),

on the other hand, he does not use, but he answers in the

affirmative by repeating frequently with vehemence what he

wants, e. g., "Do you want some roast?" _Brati, Brati_

(i. e., I do want roast).

He gives names to his puppets. He calls them Grandmamma,

Grandpapa, Uncle Kuno, Uncle Gruenberg, gardener, cook, etc. The

puppets are from his Noah's ark.

Now appear his first attempts at drawing. He draws, as he

imagines, all kinds of animals: ducks, camels, tigers. He lately

made marks, calling out _Torch und noch ein Torch_ (a stork and

another stork). (cf. pp. 172, 247.)

The book of birds is his greatest delight. I have to imitate the

notes of birds, and he does it after me, showing memory in it.

He knows at once stork, woodpecker, pigeon, duck, pelican,

siskin, and swallow. The little verses I sing at the same time

amuse him, e. g., "Zeislein, Zeislein, wo ist dein Haeuslein?"

(Little siskin, where is your little house?); and he retains

them when he hears them often. Russian words also are repeated

by him.

For the first time I observe the attempt to communicate to

others some experience of his own. He had been looking at the

picture-book with me, and when he went to the nurse he told her,

_Mamma, Bilder, Papagei_ (Mamma, pictures, parrot).

_19th Month._--From the time he was a year and a half old he has

walked alone.

He speaks whole sentences, but without connectives, e. g.,

_Niana Braten holen_ (nurse bring roast); _Caro draussen wauwau_

(Caro outside, bow-wow); _Mamma tuddut_ (sleeps, inflected

correctly); _Decke um_ (cover over); _Papa koppa Stadt_ (Papa

driven to city); _Mamma sitzt tuhl_ (Mamma sits chair); _Adolph

bei Mama bleiben_ (Adolph stay with mamma); _Noch tanzen_ (more

dance); _Pappa Fuchs machen_ (Papa make fox).

Certain words make him nervous. He does not like the refrain of

the children's song of the goat. If I say "Darum, darum, meck,

meck, meck," he looks at me indignantly and runs off. Sometimes

he lays his hand on my mouth or screams loudly for the nurse. He

gives up any play he is engaged in as soon as I say "darum,

darum." _Pax vobiscum_ has the same effect.

The songs amuse him chiefly on account of the words,

particularly through the imitations of the sounds of animals.

He knows the songs and asks of his own accord for _Kucku Esaal_,

_Kater putz_, _Kucku tralla_, but commonly hears only the first

stanza, and then wants a different song. Lately, however, he

listened very earnestly to the three stanzas of "Moepschen," and

when I asked "What now?" he answered _Noch Mops_ (more Mops).

Playing with his puppets, he hummed to himself, _tu, tu, errsen,

tu tu errsen_. I guessed that it was "Du, du liegst mir im

Herzen," which he had on the previous day wanted to hear often

and had tried to repeat.

_20th Month._--Now for the first time _ja_ is used for affirmation,

chiefly in the form _ja wohl_ (yes, indeed, certainly), which he

retains. "Do you want this?" _Ja wohl._

Being asked "Whose feet are these?" he answers correctly, _Mine_;

but no personal pronouns appear yet. He often retains a new and

difficult word that he has heard only once, e. g., "Chocolade."

To my question, after his grandfather had gone away, "Where is

Grandpapa now?" he answers sorrowfully, _verloren_ (lost).

(Cf. p. 145.)

In his plays he imitates the doings and sayings of adults, puts

a kerchief about his head and says, _Adolph go stable, give

oats_.

Not long ago, as he said good-night to us, he went also to his

image in the glass and kissed it repeatedly, saying, _Adolph,

good-night!_

_24th Month._--He knows a good many flowers, their names and

colors; calls pansies "the dark flowers."

He also caught the air and rhythm of certain songs, e. g.,

_Kommt a Vogel angeflogen, Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen, machst

mir viel Serzen_, and used to sing to himself continually when

he was on a walk. Now that he is four years old, on the

contrary, he hardly ever sings.

_25th Month._--Beetles have a great interest for him. He brings

a dead beetle into the parlor, and cries, "Run now!" His

astonishment is great that the creature does not run.

If he sees something disagreeable (e. g., he saw the other day

an organ-grinder with a monkey), he covers his face with his

hands weeping aloud and crying, _Monkey go away_. So, too, when

he sees strangers.

The Latin names of flowers and insects are easily retained by

him. They are not taught him, he simply hears them daily.

_26th and 27th Months._--Of his childish language he has

retained only the term _mammut_, for berries. Milk, which he

used to call _mima_, is now called _milch_ (cf., pp. 140, 157).

The child's use of the personal pronoun is strange. During my

absence an aunt of his took my place, and she addressed him for

the _first time_ with the word "Du" (thou), and spoke of herself

as "I," whereas I always called myself "Mama." The consequence

was that the boy for a long time used "thou" as the first

person, "I" as the second person, with logical consistency. He

hands me bread, saying, _I am hungry_, or, when I am to go with

him, _I come too_. Referring to himself, he says, _You want

flowers_; _you will play with Niania_. All other persons are

addressed with "I" instead of "you."

He tells his uncle, _There's an awfully pretty gentian in the

yard_. He gets the nurse occasionally to repeat the Latin names,

because they are difficult for her, and his correction of her is

very comical.

_28th Month._--He speaks long sentences. _Papa, come drink

coffee,_ _please do_. _Papa, I drive_ (for "you drive") _to

town, to Reval, and bring some parrots (Bellensittiche)_.

He often changes the form of words for fun, e. g., _guten

Porgen_ (for guten Morgen). On going out, he says, with a

knowing air, "Splendid weather, the sun shines so warm." He

alters songs also, putting in different expressions: e. g.,

instead of _Lieber Vogel fliege weiter, nimm a Kuss und a

Gruss_, Adolph sings, _Lieber Vogel fliege weiter in die Wolken

hinein_ (dear bird, fly farther, _into the clouds_, instead of

_take a kiss and a greeting_). It is a proof of logical thinking

that he asks, at sight of the moon, _The moon is in the sky, has

it wings?_

I had been sick; when I was better and was caressing him again,

he said, _Mama is well, the dear Jesus has made mama well with

sealing-wax_. "With sealing-wax?" I asked, in astonishment.

_Yes, from the writing-desk._ He had often seen his toys, when

they had been broken, "made well", as he called it, by being

stuck together with sealing-wax.

He now asks, _Where is the dear Jesus?_ "In heaven." _Can he fly

then; has he wings?_

Religious conceptions are difficult to impart to him, even at a

much later period: e. g., heaven is too cold for him, his nose

would freeze up there, etc.

He now asks questions a good deal in general, especially _What

is that called?_ e. g., _What are chestnuts called?_

"Horse-chestnuts." _What are these pears called?_ "Bergamots."

He jests: _Nein, Bergapots_, or, _What kind of mots are those?_

He will not eat an apple until he has learned what the name of

it is.

He would often keep asking, in wanton sport, _What are books

called?_ or _ducks?_ or _soup?_

He uses the words "to-day, to-morrow," and the names of the days

of the week, but without understanding their meaning.

Instead of saying "_zu Mittag gehen_" (go to noon-meal), he

says, logically, "zu Nachmittag gehen" (go to afternoon-meal).

The child does not know what is true, what is actual. I never

can depend on his statements, except, as it appears, when he

tells what he has had to eat. If riding is spoken of, e. g., he

has a vivid picture of riding in his mind. To-day, when I asked

him "Did you see papa ride?" he answered, _Yes, indeed, papa

rode away off into the woods_. Yet his father had not gone to

ride at all.

In the same way he often denies what he has seen and done. He

comes out of his father's room and I ask, "Well, have you said

good-night to papa?" _No._ His father told me afterward that the

child had done it.

In the park we see some crested titmice, and I tell the nurse

that, in the previous autumn, I saw for the first time Finnish

parrots or cross-bills here, but that I have not seen any since.

When the child's father asked later, "Well, Adolph, what did you

see in the park?" _Crested titmice, with golden crests_ (he adds

out of his own invention) _and Finnish parrots_. He mixes up

what he has heard and seen with what he imagines.

Truth has to be taught to a child. The less this is done, the

easier it is to inoculate him with religious notions, i. e., of

miraculous revelation; otherwise one must be prepared for many

questions that are hard to answer.

_29th month._--Sad stories affect him to tears, and he runs

away.

Names of animals and plants he remembers often more easily than

I do, and informs me. He reasons logically. Lately, when he

asked for some foolish thing, I said to him, "Sha'n't I bring

the moon for you, too?" _No_, said he, _you can't do that, it is

too high up in the clouds_.

_30th to 33d months._--He now often calls himself "Adolph," and

then speaks of himself in the third person. He frequently

confounds "I" and "you," and does not so consistently use the

first person for the second, and the reverse. The transition is

very gradually taking place to the correct use of the personal

pronoun. Instead of _my mamma_, he repeats often, when he is in

an affectionate mood, _your mamma_, _your mamma_.

Some new books are given to him. In the book of beetles there

are shown to him the party-colored and the gray, so-called

"sad," grave-digger (_necrophorus_). The latter now becomes

prominent in his plays. "Why is he called the sad?" I asked the

child yesterday. _Ah! because he has no children_, he answered,

sorrowfully. Probably he has at some time overheard this

sentence, which has no meaning for him, from a grown person.

Adult persons' ways of speaking are thus employed without an

understanding of them; pure verbal memory.

In the same way, he retains the names, in his new book, of

butterflies (few of them German) better than I do, however

crabbed and difficult they may be.