SOUNDS
§ 1. From Screaming to Talking. § 2. First Sounds. § 3. Sound-laws
of the Next Stage. § 4. Groups of Sounds. § 5. Mutilations and
Reduplications. § 6. Correction. § 7. Tone.
V.--§ 1. From Screaming to Talking.
A Danish philosopher has said: “In his whole life man achieves nothing
so great and so wonderful as what he achieved when he learnt to talk.”
When Darwin was asked in which three years of his life a man learnt
most, he said: “The first three.”
A child’s linguistic development covers three periods--the screaming
time, the crowing or babbling time, and the talking time. But the
last is a long one, and must again be divided into two periods--that
of the “little language,” the child’s own language, and that of the
common language or language of the community. In the former the child
is linguistically an individualist, in the latter he is more and more
socialized.
Of the screaming time little need be said. A child’s scream is not
uttered primarily as a means of conveying anything to others, and so
far is not properly to be called speech. But if from the child’s side
a scream is not a way of telling anything, its elders may still read
something in it and hurry to relieve the trouble. And if the child
comes to remark--as it soon will--that whenever it cries someone comes
and brings it something pleasant, if only company, it will not be long
till it makes use of this instrument whenever it is uneasy or wants
something. The scream, which was at first a reflex action, is now a
voluntary action. And many parents have discovered that the child has
learnt to use its power of screaming to exercise a tyrannical power
over them--so that they have had to walk up and down all night with a
screaming child that prefers this way of spending the night to lying
quietly in its cradle. The only course is brutally to let the baby
scream till it is tired, and persist in never letting it get its desire
_because_ it screams for it, but only because what it desires is good
for it. The child learns its lesson, and a scream is once more what
it was at first, an involuntary, irresistible result of the fact that
something is wrong.
Screaming has, however, another side. It is of physiological value as
an exercise of all the muscles and appliances which are afterwards to
be called into play for speech and song. Nurses say--and there may be
something in it--that the child who screams loudest as a baby becomes
the best singer later.
Babbling time produces pleasanter sounds which are more adapted for
the purposes of speech. Cooing, crowing, babbling--i.e. uttering
meaningless sounds and series of sounds--is a delightful exercise like
sprawling with outstretched arms and legs or trying to move the tiny
fingers. It has been well said that for a long time a child’s dearest
toy is its tongue--that is, of course, not the tongue only, but the
other organs of speech as well, especially the lips and vocal chords.
At first the movements of these organs are as uncontrolled as those
of the arms, but gradually they become more systematic, and the boy
knows what sound he wishes to utter and is in a position to produce it
exactly.
First, then, come single vowels or vowels with a single consonant
preceding them, as _la_, _ra_, _lö_, etc., though a baby’s sounds
cannot be identified with any of ours or written down with our
letters. For, though the head and consequently the mouth capacity is
disproportionally great in an infant and grows more rapidly than its
limbs, there is still a great difference between its mouth capacity and
that required to utter normal speech-sounds. I have elsewhere (PhG,
p. 81 ff.) given the results of a series of measurings of the jaw in
children and adults and discussed the importance of these figures for
phonetic theory: while there is no growth of any importance during the
talking period (for a child of five may have the same jaw-length as a
man of thirty-seven), the growth is enormous during the first months
of a child’s life: in the case of my own child, from 45 mm. a few days
after birth to 60 mm. at three months old and 75 mm. at eleven months,
while the average of grown-up men is 99 mm. and of women 93 mm. The
consequence is that the sounds of the baby are different from ours, and
that even when they resemble ours the mechanism of production may be
different from the normal one; when my son during the first weeks said
something like _la_, I was able to see distinctly that the tip of the
tongue was not at all in the position required for our _l_. This want
of congruence between the acoustic manners of operation in the infant
and the adult no doubt gives us the key to many of the difficulties
that have puzzled previous observers of small children.
Babbling or crowing begins not earlier than the third week; it may be,
not till the seventh or eighth week. The first sound exercises are to
be regarded as muscular exercises pure and simple, as is clear from
the fact that deaf-mutes amuse themselves with them, although they
cannot themselves hear them. But the moment comes when the hearing
child finds a pleasure in hearing its own sounds, and a most important
step is taken when the little one begins to hear a resemblance between
the sounds uttered by its mother or nurse and its own. The mother will
naturally answer the baby’s syllables by repeating the same, and when
the baby recognizes the likeness, it secures an inexhaustible source
of pleasure, and after some time reaches the next stage, when it tries
itself to imitate what is said to it (generally towards the close of
the first year). The value of this exercise cannot be over-estimated:
the more that parents understand how to play this game with the
baby--of saying something and letting the baby say it after, however
meaningless the syllable-sequences that they make--the better will
be the foundation for the child’s later acquisition and command of
language.
V.--§ 2. First Sounds.
It is generally said that the order in which the child learns to utter
the different sounds depends on their difficulty: the easiest sounds
are produced first. That is no doubt true in the main; but when we go
into details we find that different writers bring forward lists of
sounds in different order. All are agreed, however, that among the
consonants the labials, _p_, _b_ and _m_, are early sounds, if not the
earliest. The explanation has been given that the child can see the
working of his mother’s lips in these sounds and therefore imitates
her movements. This implies far too much conscious thought on the part
of the baby, who utters his ‘ma’ or ‘mo’ before he begins to imitate
anything said to him by his surroundings. Moreover, it has been pointed
out that the child’s attention is hardly ever given to its mother’s
mouth, but is steadily fixed on her eyes. The real reason is probably
that the labial muscles used to produce _b_ or _m_ are the same that
the baby has exercised in sucking the breast or the bottle. It would be
interesting to learn if blind children also produce the labial sounds
first.
Along with the labial sounds the baby produces many other sounds--vowel
and consonant--and in these cases one is certain that it has not been
able to see how these sounds are produced by its mother. Even in the
case of the labials we know that what distinguishes _m_ from _b_, the
lowering of the soft palate, and _b_ from _p_, the vibrations of the
vocal chords, is invisible. Some of the sounds produced by means of the
tongue may be too hard to pronounce till the muscles of the tongue have
been exercised in consequence of the child having begun to eat more
solid things than milk.
By the end of the first year the number of sounds which the little
babbler has mastered is already considerable, and he loves to combine
long series of the same syllables, dadadada ..., nenenene ...,
bygnbygnbygn ..., etc. That is a game which need not even cease when
the child is able to talk actual language. It is strange that among an
infant’s sounds one can often detect sounds--for instance _k_, _g_,
_h_, and uvular _r_--which the child will find difficulty in producing
afterwards when they occur in real words, or which may be unknown
to the language which it will some day speak. The explanation lies
probably in the difference between doing a thing in play or without a
plan--when it is immaterial which movement (sound) is made--and doing
the same thing of fixed intention when this sound, and this sound only,
is required, at a definite point in the syllable, and with this or that
particular sound before and after. Accordingly, great difficulties
come to be encountered when the child begins more consciously and
systematically to imitate his elders. Some sounds come without effort
and may be used incessantly, to the detriment of others which the child
may have been able previously to produce in play; and a time even
comes when the stock of sounds actually diminishes, while particular
sounds acquire greater precision. Dancing masters, singing masters and
gymnastic teachers have similar experiences. After some lessons the
child may seem more awkward than it was before the lessons began.
The ‘little language’ which the child makes for itself by imperfect
imitation of the sounds of its elders seems so arbitrary that it
may well be compared to the child’s first rude drawings of men and
animals. A Danish boy named _Gustav_ (1.6)[17] called himself [dodado]
and turned the name _Karoline_ into [nnn]. Other Danish children
made _skammel_ into [gramn] or [gap], _elefant_ into [vat], _Karen_
into [gaja], etc. A few examples from English children: Hilary M.
(1.6) called _Ireland_ (her sister) [a·ni], Gordon M. (1.10) called
_Millicent_ (his sister) [dadu·]. Tony E. (1.11) called his playmate
_Sheila_ [dubabud].
V.--§ 3. Sound-laws of the Next Stage.
As the child gets away from the peculiarities of his individual ‘little
language,’ his speech becomes more regular, and a linguist can in
many cases see reasons for his distortions of normal words. When he
replaces one sound by another there is always some common element in
the formation of the two sounds, which causes a kindred impression on
the ear, though _we_ may have difficulty in detecting it because we are
so accustomed to noticing the difference. There is generally a certain
system in the sound substitutions of children, and in many instances we
are justified in speaking of ‘strictly observed sound-laws.’ Let us now
look at some of these.
Children in all countries tend to substitute [t] for [k]: both sounds
are produced by a complete stoppage of the breath for the moment by the
tongue, the only difference being that it is the back of the tongue
which acts in one case, and the tip of the tongue in the other. A child
who substitutes _t_ for _k_ will also substitute _d_ for _g_; if he
says ‘tat’ for ‘cat’ he will say ‘do’ for ‘go.’
_R_ is a difficult sound. Hilary M. (2.0) has no _r_’s in her speech.
Initially they become _w_, as in [wʌn] for ‘run,’ medially between
vowels they become _l_, as in [veli, beli] for ‘very, berry,’ in
consonantal combinations they are lost, as in [kai, bʌʃ] for ‘cry,
brush.’ Tony E. (1.10 to 3.0) for medial _r_ between vowels first
substituted _d_, as in [vedi] for ‘very,’ and later _g_ [vegi];
similarly in [mu·gi] for ‘Muriel,’ [tægi] for ‘carry’; he often dropped
initial _r_, e.g. _oom_ for ‘room.’ It is not unusual for children who
use _w_ for _r_ in most combinations to say [tʃ] for _tr_ and [dʒ] for
_dr_, as in ‘chee,’ ‘jawer’ for ‘tree,’ ‘drawer.’ This illustrates
the fact that what to us is _one_ sound, and therefore represented
in writing by _one_ letter, appears to the child’s ear as different
sounds--and generally the phonetician will agree with the child that
there are really differences in the articulation of the sound according
to position in the syllable and to surroundings, only the child
exaggerates the dissimilarities, just as we in writing one and the same
letter exaggerate the similarity.
The two _th_ sounds offer some difficulties and are often imitated as
_f_ and _v_ respectively, as in ‘frow’ and ‘muvver’ for ‘throw’ and
‘mother’; others say ‘ze’ or ‘de’ for ‘the.’ Hilary M. (2.0) has great
difficulty with _th_ and _s_; _th_ usually becomes [ʃ], [beʃ, ti·ʃ,
ʃri·] for ‘Beth,’ ‘teeth,’ ‘three’; _s_ becomes [ʃ], e.g. [franʃiʃ,
ʃti·m] for ‘Francis,’ ‘steam’; in the same way _z_ becomes [ʒ] as in
[lʌbʒ, bouʒ] for ‘loves,’ ‘Bowes’; _sw_ becomes [fw] as in [fwiŋ,
fwi·t] for ‘swing,’ ‘sweet.’ She drops _l_ in consonantal combinations,
e.g. [ki·n, kaim, kɔk, ʃi·p] for ‘clean,’ ‘climb,’ ‘clock,’ ‘sleep.’
Sometimes it requires a phonetician’s knowledge to understand the
individual sound-laws of a child. Thus I pick out from some specimens
given by O’Shea, p. 135 f. (girl, 2.9), the following words: _pell_
(smell), _teeze_ (sneeze), _poke_ (smoke), _tow_ (snow), and formulate
the rule: _s_ + a nasal became the voiceless stop corresponding to the
nasal, a kind of assimilation, in which the place of articulation and
the mouth-closure of the nasals were preserved, and the sound was made
unvoiced and non-nasal as the _s_. In other combinations _m_ and _n_
were intact.
Some further faults are illustrated in Tony E.’s [tʃouz, pʌg, pus,
tæm, pʌm, bæk, pi·z, nouʒ, ɔk, es, u·] for _clothes_, _plug_, _push_,
_tram_, _plum_, _black_, _please_, _nose_, _clock_, _yes_, _you_.
V.--§ 4. Groups of Sounds.
Even when a sound by itself can be pronounced, the child often finds it
hard to pronounce it when it forms part of a group of sounds. _S_ is
often dropped before another consonant, as in ‘tummy’ for ‘stomach.’
Other examples have already been given above. Hilary M. (2.0) had
difficulty with _lp_ and said [hæpl] for ‘help.’ She also said [ointən]
for ‘ointment’; C. M. L. (2.3) said ‘sikkums’ for ‘sixpence.’ Tony E.
(2.0) turns _grannie_ into [nægi]. When initial consonant groups are
simplified, it is generally, though not always, the stop that remains:
_b_ instead of _bl-_, _br-_, _k_ instead of _kr-_, _sk-_, _skr-_, _p_
instead of _pl-_, _pr-_, _spr-_, etc. For the groups occurring medially
and finally no general rule seems possible.
V.--§ 5. Mutilations and Reduplications.
To begin with, the child is unable to master long sequences of
syllables; he prefers monosyllables and often emits them singly and
separated by pauses. Even in words that to us are inseparable wholes
some children will make breaks between syllables, e.g. Shef-field,
Ing-land. But more often they will give only part of the word,
generally the last syllable or syllables; hence we get pet-names like
_Bet_ or _Beth_ for Elizabeth and forms like ‘tatoes’ for potatoes,
‘chine’ for machine, ‘tina’ for concertina, ‘tash’ for moustache, etc.
Hilary M. (1.10) called an express-cart a _press-cart_, bananas and
pyjamas _nanas_ and _jamas_.
It is not, however, the production of long sequences of syllables
in itself that is difficult to the child, for in its meaningless
babbling it may begin very early to pronounce long strings of sounds
without any break; but the difficulty is to remember what sounds
have to be put together to bring about exactly this or that word. We
grown-up people may experience just the same sort of difficulty if
after hearing once the long name of a Bulgarian minister or a Sanskrit
book we are required to repeat it at once. Hence we should not wonder
at such pronunciations as [pekəlout] for _petticoat_ or [efelənt]
for _elephant_ (Beth M., 2.6); Hilary M. called a _caterpillar_ a
_pillarcat_. Other transpositions are _serreval_ for _several_ and
_ocken_ for _uncle_; cf. also _wops_ for _wasp_.
To explain the frequent reduplications found in children’s language it
is not necessary, as some learned authors have done, to refer to the
great number of reduplicated words in the languages of primitive tribes
and to see in the same phenomenon in our own children an atavistic
return to primitive conditions, on the Häckelian assumption that the
development of each individual has to pass rapidly through the same
(‘phylogenetic’) stages as the whole lineage of his ancestors. It is
simpler and more natural to refer these reduplications to the pleasure
always felt in repeating the same muscular action until one is tired.
The child will repeat over and over again the same movements of legs
and arms, and we do the same when we wave our hand or a handkerchief
or when we nod our head several times to signify assent, etc. When we
laugh we repeat the same syllable consisting of _h_ and a more or less
indistinct vowel, and when we sing a melody without words we are apt to
‘reduplicate’ indefinitely. Thus also with the little ones. Apart from
such words as _papa_ and _mamma_, to which we shall have to revert in
another chapter (VIII, § 8), children will often form words from those
of their elders by repeating one syllable; cf. _puff-puff_, _gee-gee_.
Tracy (p. 132) records _pepe_ for ‘pencil,’ _kaka_ for ‘Carrie.’ For a
few weeks (1.11) Hilary M. reduplicated whole words, e.g. _king-king_,
_ring-ring_ (i.e. bell), _water-water_. Tony F. (1.10) uses [touto] for
his own name. Hence pet-names like _Dodo_; they are extremely frequent
in French--for instance, _Fifine_, _Lolotte_, _Lolo_, _Mimi_; the name
_Daudet_ has arisen in a similar way from _Claudet_, a diminutive of
Claude.
* * * * *
It is a similar phenomenon (a kind of partial reduplication) when
sounds at a distance affect one another, as when Hilary M. (2.0) said
[gɔgi] for _doggie_, [bɔbin] for _Dobbin_, [dezmən di·n] for _Jesmond
Dene_, [baikikl] for _bicycle_, [kekl] for _kettle_. Tracy (p. 133)
mentions _bopoo_ for ‘bottle,’ in which _oo_ stands for the hollow
sound of syllabic _l_. One correspondent mentions _whoofing-cough_ for
‘whooping-cough’ (where the final sound has crept into the first word)
and _chicken-pops_ for ‘chicken-pox.’ Some children say ‘aneneme’ for
_anemone_; and in S. L. (4.9) this caused a curious confusion during
the recent war: “Mother, there must be two sorts of anenemies, flowers
and Germans.”
Dr. Henry Bradley once told me that his youngest child had a difficulty
with the name _Connie_, which was made alternatingly [tɔni] and
[kɔŋi], in both cases with two consonants articulated at the same
point. Similar instances are mentioned in German books on children’s
language, thus _gigarr_ for ‘zigarre,’ _baibift_ for ‘bleistift,’
_autobobil_ (Meringer),[18] _fotofafieren_ (Stern), _ambam_ for
‘armband,’ _dan_ for ‘dame,’ _pap_ for ‘patte’ (Ronjat). I have given
many Danish examples in my Danish book. Grammont’s child (see _Mélanges
linguistiques offerts à A. Meillet_, 1902) carried through these
changes in a most systematic way.
V.--§ 6. Correction.
The time comes when the child corrects his mistakes--where it said
‘tat’ it now says ‘cat.’ Here there are two possibilities which both
seem to occur in actual life. One is that the child hears the correct
sound some time before he is able to imitate it correctly; he will thus
still say _t_ for _k_, though he may in some way object to other people
saying ‘tum’ for ‘come.’ Passy relates how a little French girl would
say _tosson_ both for _garçon_ and _cochon_; but she protested when
anybody else said “C’est un petit cochon” in speaking about a boy, or
vice versa. Such a child, as soon as it can produce the new sound, puts
it correctly into all the places where it is required. This, I take it,
is the ordinary procedure. Frans (my own boy) could not pronounce _h_
and said _an_, _on_ for the Danish pronouns _han_, _hun_; but when he
began to pronounce this sound, he never misplaced it (2.4).
The other possibility is that the child learns how to pronounce the
new sound at a time when its own acoustic impression is not yet quite
settled; in that case there will be a period during which his use of
the new sound is uncertain and fluctuating. When parents are in too
great a hurry to get a child out of some false pronunciation, they may
succeed in giving it a new sound, but the child will tend to introduce
it in places where it does not belong. On the whole, it seems therefore
the safest plan to leave it to the child itself to discover that its
sound is not the correct one.
Sometimes a child will acquire a sound or a sound combination correctly
and then lose it till it reappears a few months later. In an English
family where there was no question of the influence of _h_-less
servants, each child in succession passed through an _h_-less period,
and one of the children, after pronouncing _h_ correctly, lost the
use of it altogether for two or three months. I have had similar
experiences with Danish children. S. L. (ab. 2) said ‘bontin’ for
_bonnet_; but five months earlier she had said _bonnet_ correctly.
The path to perfection is not always a straight one. Tony E. in order
to arrive at the correct pronunciation of _please_ passed through the
following stages: (1) [bi·], (2) [bli·], (3) [pi·z], (4) [pwi·ʒ], (5)
[beisk, meis, mais] and several other impossible forms. Tracy (p. 139)
gives the following forms through which the boy A. (1.5) had to pass
before being able to say _pussy_: _pooheh_, _poofie_, _poopoohie_,
_poofee_. A French child had four forms [mèni, pèti, mèti, mèsi] before
being able to say _merci_ correctly (Grammont). A Danish child passed
through _bejab_ and _vamb_ before pronouncing _svamp_ (‘sponge’), etc.
It is certain that all this while the little brain is working, and even
consciously working, though at first it has not sufficient command of
speech to say anything about it. Meringer says that children do not
practise, but that their new acquisitions of sounds happen at once
without any visible preparation. He may be right in the main with
regard to the learning of single sounds, though even there I incline
to doubt the possibility of a universal rule; but Ronjat (p. 55) is
certainly right as against Meringer with regard to the way in which
children learn new and difficult combinations. Here they certainly
do practise, and are proudly conscious of the happy results of their
efforts. When Frans (2.11) mastered the combination _fl_, he was
very proud, and asked his mother: “Mother, can you say _flyve_?”;
then he came to me and told me that he could say _bluse_ and _flue_,
and when asked whether he could say _blad_, he answered: “No, not
yet; Frans cannot say _b-lad_” (with a little interval between the
_b_ and the _l_). Five weeks later he said: “Mother, won’t you play
upon the _klaver_ (piano)?” and after a little while, “Frans can say
_kla_ so well.” About the same time he first mispronounced the word
_manchetter_, and then (when I asked what he was saying, without
telling him that anything was wrong) he gave it the correct sound, and
I heard him afterwards in the adjoining room repeat the word to himself
in a whisper.
How well children observe sounds is again seen by the way in which they
will correct their elders if they give a pronunciation to which they
are not accustomed--for instance, in a verse they have learnt by heart.
Beth M (2.6) was never satisfied with her parents’ pronunciation of
“What will you buy me when you get there?” She always insisted on their
gabbling the first words as quickly as they could and then coming out
with an emphatic _there_.
V.--§ 7. Tone.
As to the differences in the tone of a voice, even a baby shows by his
expression that he can distinguish clearly between what is said to him
lovingly and what sharply, a long time before he understands a single
word of what is said. Many children are able at a very early age to
hit off the exact note in which something is said or sung. Here is a
story of a boy of more advanced age. In Copenhagen he had had his hair
cut by a Swedish lady and did not like it. When he travelled with his
mother to Norway, as soon as he entered the house, he broke out with
a scream: “Mother, I hope I’m not going to have my hair cut?” He had
noticed the Norwegian intonation, which is very like the Swedish, and
it brought an unpleasant association of ideas.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] In this book the age of a child is indicated by stating the number
of years and months completed: 1.6 thus means “in the seventh month of
the second year,” etc.
[18] An American child said _autonobile_ [ɔtənobi·l] with partial
assimilation of _m_ to the point-stop _t_.