ATTACKING OUR LANGUAGE.
No part of the life of a child appeals to us more powerfully perhaps
than the first use of our language. The small person's first efforts in
linguistics win us by a certain graciousness, by the friendly impulse
they disclose to get mentally near us, to enter into the full fruition
of human intercourse. The difficulties, too, which we manage to lay upon
the young learner of our tongue, and the way in which he grapples with
these, lend a peculiar interest, half pathetic, half humorous, to this
field of infantile activity. A child first begins to work in downright
earnest when he tries to master these difficulties.
As we are here studying the child at an age when he has acquired a
certain hold on human speech, I shall make no attempt to describe the
babbling of the first months which precedes true speech. For the same
reason I shall have to pass by the interesting beginnings of
sign-making, and shall only just touch the first stages of articulate
performance. All this is, I think, deeply interesting, but it cannot be
adequately dealt with here, and I have fully dealt with it in my larger
work.
The first difficulty which our little linguist has to encounter is the
mechanical one of reproducing, with a recognisable measure of
approximation, our verbal sounds. What a very rough approximation it is
at first, all mothers know. When, for example, a child expects you to
translate his sound "koppa" into "Tommy," or "pots" into "hippopotamus,"
it will be acknowledged that he is making heavy demands. Yet though he
causes us difficulties in this way he does so because he finds himself
in difficulties. His articulatory organ cannot master the terrible words
we put in his way, and he is driven to these short cuts and other
make-shifts.
_The Namer of Things._
Leaving now the problem of getting over the mechanical difficulties of
our speech, let us see what the little explorer has to do when trying to
use verbal sounds with their right meanings. Here, too, we shall find
that huge difficulties beset his path, and that his arrival at the goal
proves him to have been in his way as valiant and hard-working as an
African explorer.
One feature of the early tussle with our language is curious and often
quaintly pretty. Having at first but few names, the little experimenter
makes the most of these by extending them in new and surprising
directions. The extension of names to new objects on the ground of some
perceived likeness has been touched on above (p. 3); and many other
examples might be given. Thus when one child first saw a star and
wanted to name it he called it, as if by a poetic metaphor, an "eye". In
like manner the name "pin" was extended by another child to a crumb just
picked up, a fly, and a caterpillar, and seemed to mean something little
to be taken between the fingers. The same child used the sound "'at"
(hat) for anything put on the head, including a hair-brush. Similarly
children often extend the names "Mamma, baby" to express any contrast of
size, as when a small coin was called by an American child a "baby
dollar".
In this extension of language by the child we find not merely a tendency
to move along lines of analogy, as in the above instances, but to go
from a thing to its accompaniments by way of what the psychologist calls
association. This is illustrated by the case of Darwin's grandchild, who
after learning to use the common children's name for duck, "quack,"
proceeded to call a sheet of water "quack". In like manner a little girl
called the gas lamp "pop" from the sound produced when lighting it, and
then carried over the name "pop" to the stool on which the maid stood
when proceeding to light it.
There is another curious way in which children are driven by the
slenderness of their verbal resources to "extend" the names they learn.
They will often employ a word which indicates some relation to express
what may be called the inverted relation. For example, like the
unschooled yokel they will sometimes make the word "learn" do duty for
"teach" also. In one case "spend" was made to express "cost". It was a
somewhat similar inversion when a little girl called her parasol blown
about by the wind "a windy parasol," and a stone that made her hand sore
"a very sore stone".
Not only do the small experimenters thus stretch the application of
their words beyond our conventional limitations, they are often daring
enough when their stock fails them to invent new names. Sometimes this
is done by framing a new composite name out of familiar ones. One child,
for example, possessing the word steam-ship and wanting the name
sailing-ship, cleverly hit upon the composite form "wind-ship". One
little girl, when only a year and nine months old, showed quite a
passion for classing objects by help of such compound names, arranging
the rooms, for example, into "morner-room," "dinner-room" (she was fond
of adding "er" at this time) and "nursery-room". Savages do much the
same kind of thing, as when the Aztecs called a boat a "water-house".
It is no less bold a feat when the hard-pressed tyro in speechland
frames a new word on the model of other words which he already knows.
The results are often quaint enough. One small boy talked of the
"rainer," the fairy who makes rain, and another little boy dubbed a
teacher the "lessoner". Two children invented the quaint substantive
"thinks" for "thoughts," and another child used the form "digs" for
holes dug in the ground. Other droll inventions occur, as when one small
person asked to see another worm "deading," and neatly expressed the act
of undoing a parcel by the form "unparcel"; and when another child spoke
of his metal toy being "unhotted," lacking our word cooled, and asked,
"Can't I be sorried?" for "Can't I be forgiven?"
Just as children invent new general names, so they now and again invent
"proper" names in order to mark off one person or thing from another of
the same kind. Thus a German professor tells us that his grand-niece
introduced her new nurse, who had the same name, "Mary," as her old one,
as "Evening Mary," because she had arrived in the evening.
Of course children's experiments in language are not always so neat as
this. They are sometimes misled by false analogies into the formation of
such clumsy words as "sorrified" for "sorry," and "magnicious" for
"magnificent".
_The Sentence-builder._
It is an interesting moment when the young linguist tries his hand at
putting words together in sentences. As is pretty well known, a child
has for some time to try to make known his thoughts and wishes by single
vocables, such as "mamma," "milk," "puss," "up," and so forth. Each of
these words serves in the first baby language for a variety of
sentences. Thus "Puss!" means sometimes "Puss is doing something," at
other times "I want puss," and so forth. But somewhere about the age of
one year nine months the child makes bold to essay a more explicit and
definite form of statement.
The construction of sentences proceeds in a cautious manner. At first
the structure is of the simplest, two words being placed one after the
other, in what is called apposition, as in the couple, "Big bir" (big
bird), "Papa no" (papa's nose), and the like.
Later on longer sentences are attempted of a similar pattern; and it is
truly wonderful how much the child manages to express in this rude
fashion without any aid from those valuable auxiliaries, prepositions,
and the like. For example, one boy when in his twentieth month gave this
elaborate order to his father, "Dada toe toe ba," that is, "Dada is to
go and put his toes in the bath".
Quaint inversions of our order not infrequently occur in this early
sentence-making. Thus one child used the form, "Out-pull-baby 'pecs,"
meaning in our language, "Baby pulls (or will pull) out the spectacles".
Sometimes the order reminds us still more closely of the idiom of
foreign languages, as when a little girl said: "How Babba (baby, _i.e._,
herself) does feed nicely!"
Another curious feature of children's first style of composition is the
fondness for antithesis. A little boy used when wishing to express his
approval of something, say a dog, to use the form, "This a nice bow-wow,
not nasty bow-bow". Similarly a little girl said, "Boo (the name of her
cat) dot (got) tail; poor Babba (baby) dot no tail," proceeding to
search for a tail under her skirts.
In the first attempts to fit our words together dreadful slips are apt
to occur. The way in which children are wont to violate the rules of
grammar when using verbs, as in saying "eated" for "ate," "scram" for
"screamed," "be'd" for "was," and so on, is well known, and there are
many excuses to be found for these very natural errors.
Particularly instructive are the odd confusions which children are apt
to fall into when they come to use the pronouns, and more particularly
"I," "me". Many a child begins by using "I" and "you" with mechanical
imitation of others, meaning by "you" his own person, which is, of
course, called "you" by others when addressing him. The forms "I," "me"
and "my" are apt to be hopelessly mixed up, as in saying "me go" and "my
go" for "I go," "me book" for "my book," and so forth. One little boy
used the form "I am" for "I," saying, for example, "I am don't want to".
A little German girl had an odd way of splitting up herself into two
persons, saying, for example, "She has made me wet," meaning that she
had made herself wet.
Throughout this work of mastering our language a child is wont to eke
out his deficiencies by bold strokes of originality. When, for example,
a little girl towards the end of the second year, after being jumped by
her father, wants him to jump her mother also, says, in default of the
word "jump," "Make mamma high". Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet,
when a child, being told by his sick mother that he had not said
something she wished him to say, answered, "I said it, but you didn't
hear, you are poorly, and so _blind in the ear_". Quite pretty metaphors
are sometimes hit upon, as when a little boy of two seeing his father
putting a piece of wood on the fire said, "Flame going to eat it". A boy
of twenty-seven months ingeniously said, "It rains off," for "The rain
has left off". Once a girl about the same age as the boy hit on the
idiom, "No two 'tatoes left," for "Only one potato is left". Pretty
constructions sometimes appear in these make-shifts, as when a little
girl of whom Mrs. Meynell tells, wishing to know how far she might go in
spending money on fruit, asked, "What mustn't it be more than?"
_The Interpreter of Words._
There is one part of this task of mastering our language which deserves
especial notice, _viz._, the puzzling out of the meanings we put, or try
to put, into our words.
Many good stories of children show that they have a way of sadly
misunderstanding our words. This arises often from the ignorance of the
child and the narrowness of his experience, as when a Sunday school
scholar understood the story of the good Samaritan to mean that a
gentleman came and poured some paraffin (_i.e._, oil) over the poor man.
By a child's mind what we call accidentals often get taken to be the
real meaning. A boy and a girl, twins, had been dressed alike. Later on
the boy was put into a "suit". A lady asked the girl about this time
whether they were not the twins, when she replied, "No, we _used_ to
be". "Twin" was inseparably associated in her mind with the similarity
in dress.
It should be remembered, too, that we greatly add to the difficulties of
the small student of our language by reason of the ambiguities of our
expressions, and of our short and elliptical modes of speaking. It was a
quite natural misconception when an American child, noting that children
were "half price" at a certain show, wanted his mother to get a baby now
that they were cheap. Many another child besides Jean Ingelow has been
saddened at being told by her father or other grown-up who was dancing
her on his knee that he must put her down as he "had a bone in his leg".
Much misapprehension arises, too from our figurative use of language,
which the little listener is apt to interpret in a very literal way, as
when a small boy indignantly resented the statement of his mother who
was driving him behind a rather skittish pony, "Pony has lost his head".
Children are desirous of understanding us and make brave efforts to put
meanings into our words, sometimes falling comically short of the mark.
A little fellow of two who had been called "fat" by his nurse when given
his bath, afterwards proceeded to call his father "fat" when he saw him
taking his bath. "Fat" had by a natural misconception taken on the
meaning of "naked". It was a simple movement of childish thought when a
little school-girl answered the question of the Inspector, "What is an
average?" by saying, "What the hen lays eggs on". She had heard her
mother say, "The hen lays so many eggs 'on the average' every week," and
had no doubt imagined a little myth about this average.
It is the same with what is read to them. Where they do not recognise a
meaning they invent one, or if necessary substitute an intelligible word
for an unintelligible one. Young Hermiston in R. L. Stevenson's last
story naturally enough said in speaking of his father, the "hanging
judge," "It were better for that man if a _milestone_ were bound about
his neck". Similarly they will invert the relations of words in order to
arrive at something like a meaning. Mr. Canton relates in his pretty
sketch of a child, _The Invisible Playmate_, that his little heroine,
who knew the lines in _Struwwelpeter_--
The doctor came and shook his head,
And gave him nasty physic too--
was told that she would catch a cold, and that she at once replied, "And
will the doctor come and shook my head?" It was so much more natural to
suppose that when the doctor came and did something this was carried out
on the person of the patient.
There is something of this same impatience of meaningless sayings, of
the same keen desire to import a meaning into strange words, in
children's "word-play," as we call it. For example, a little boy about
four years old heard his mother speak of nurse's neuralgia, from which
she had been suffering for some time. He thereupon exclaimed, "I don't
think it's _new_ ralgia, I call it _old_ ralgia". Was this playful
punning or a half-serious attempt to correct a misstatement? A child
called his doll "Shakespeare" because its spear-like legs could be
shaken. We know that adults sometimes do the same kind of thing, as a
cabman I once overheard speaking to somebody about putting down
"_ash_phalt". We all like to feel at home with words, and if they look
dreadfully strange we do our best to give them a look of old
acquaintance.
It should be added that children, though they eke out their deficiencies
by inventing new verbal forms and putting new meanings into our words,
have on the whole a vast respect for words. This is seen in their way of
stickling for accuracy when others repeat familiar word-forms. The zeal
of a child in correcting the language not only of other children, but of
grown-ups, and the comical errors he will now and again fall into in
exercising his corrective function, are well known to parents. Sometimes
he shows himself the most absurd of pedants. "Shall I read to you out
of this book, baby?" asked a mother of her boy, about two and a half
years old. "No," replied the infant, "not _out_ of dot book, but somepy
inside of it." The same little stickler for verbal accuracy, when his
nurse asked him, "Are you going to build your bricks, baby?" replied
solemnly, "We don't build bricks, we make them and then build _with_
them". Yet such disagreeable pedantry shows how conscientiously the
small curly head is trying to bring clearness and order into the dark
tangle of our speech, and it ought not to be treated harshly.