SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
§ 1. Why is the Native Language learnt so well? § 2. Natural
Ability and Sex. § 3. Mother-tongue and Other Tongue. § 4. Playing
at Language. § 5. Secret Languages. § 6. Onomatopœia. § 7.
Word-inventions. § 8. ‘Mamma’ and ‘Papa.’
VIII.--§ 1. Why is the Native Language learnt so well?
How does it happen that children in general learn their mother-tongue
so well? That this is a problem becomes clear when we contrast
a child’s first acquisition of its mother-tongue with the later
acquisition of any foreign tongue. The contrast is indeed striking
and manifold: _here_ we have a quite little child, without experience
or prepossessions; _there_ a bigger child, or it may be a grown-up
person with all sorts of knowledge and powers: _here_ a haphazard
method of procedure; _there_ the whole task laid out in a system (for
even in the schoolbooks that do not follow the old grammatical system
there is a certain definite order of progress from more elementary to
more difficult matters): _here_ no professional teachers, but chance
parents, brothers and sisters, nursery-maids and playmates; _there_
teachers trained for many years specially to teach languages: _here_
only oral instruction; _there_ not only that, but reading-books,
dictionaries and other assistance. And yet this is the result: _here_
complete and exact command of the language as a native speaks it,
however stupid the children; _there_, in most cases, even with people
otherwise highly gifted, a defective and inexact command of the
language. On what does this difference depend?
The problem has never been elucidated or canvassed from all sides,
but here and there one finds a partial answer, often given out to be
a complete answer. Often one side of the question only is considered,
that which relates to sounds, as if the whole problem had been
solved when one had found a reason for children acquiring a better
pronunciation of their mother-tongue than one generally gets in later
life of a foreign speech.
Many people accordingly tell us that children’s organs of speech are
especially flexible, but that this suppleness of the tongue and lips is
lost in later life. This explanation, however, does not hold water,
as is shown sufficiently by the countless mistakes in sound made by
children. If their organs were as flexible as is pretended, they could
learn sounds correctly at once, while as a matter of fact it takes a
long time before all the sounds and groups of sounds are imitated with
tolerable accuracy. Suppleness is not something which is original, but
something acquired later, and acquired with no small difficulty, and
then only with regard to the sounds of one’s own language, and not
universally.
The same applies to the second answer (given by Bremer, _Deutsche
Phonetik_, 2), namely, that the child’s ear is especially sensitive to
impressions. The ear also requires development, since at first it can
scarcely detect a number of _nuances_ which we grown-up people hear
most distinctly.
Some people say that the reason why a child learns its native language
so well is that it has no established habits to contend against. But
that is not right either: as any good observer can see, the process
by which the child acquires sounds is pursued through a continuous
struggle against bad habits which it has acquired at an earlier stage
and which may often have rooted themselves remarkably firmly.
Sweet (H 19) says among other things that the conditions of learning
vernacular sounds are so favourable because the child has nothing else
to do at the time. On the contrary, one may say that the child has an
enormous deal to do while it is learning the language; it is at that
time active beyond all belief: in a short time it subdues wider tracts
than it ever does later in a much longer time. The more wonderful
is it that along with those tasks it finds strength to learn its
mother-tongue and its many refinements and crooked turns.
Some point to heredity and say that a child learns that language most
easily which it is disposed beforehand to learn by its ancestry, or in
other words that there are inherited convolutions of the brain which
take in this language better than any other. Perhaps there is something
in this, but we have no definite, carefully ascertained facts. Against
the theory stands the fact that the children of immigrants acquire the
language of their foster-country to all appearance just as surely and
quickly as children of the same age whose forefathers have been in the
country for ages. This may be observed in England, in Denmark, and
still more in North America. Environment clearly has greater influence
than descent.
The real answer in my opinion (which is not claimed to be absolutely
new in every respect) lies partly in the child itself, partly in the
behaviour towards it of the people around it. In the first place, the
time of learning the mother-tongue is the most favourable of all,
namely, the first years of life. If one assumes that mental endowment
means the capacity for development, without doubt all children are best
endowed in their first years: from birth onwards there is a steady
decline in the power of grasping what is new and of accommodating
oneself to it. With some this decline is a very rapid one--they quickly
become fossilized and unable to make a change in their habits; with
others one can notice a happy power of development even in old age; but
no one keeps very long in its full range the adaptability of his first
years.
Further, we must remember that the child has far more abundant
opportunities of hearing his mother-tongue than one gets, as a rule,
with any language one learns later. He hears it from morning to night,
and, be it noted, in its genuine shape, with the right pronunciation,
right intonation, right use of words and right syntax: the language
comes to him as a fresh, ever-bubbling spring. Even before he begins to
say anything himself, his first understanding of the language is made
easier by the habit that mothers and nurses have of repeating the same
phrases with slight alterations, and at the same time doing the thing
which they are talking about. “Now we must wash the little face, now we
must wash the little forehead, now we must wash the little nose, now
we must wash the little chin, now we must wash the little ear,” etc.
If _men_ had to attend to their children, they would never use so many
words--but in that case the child would scarcely learn to understand
and talk as soon as it does when it is cared for by women.[23]
Then the child has, as it were, private lessons in its mother-tongue
all the year round. There is nothing of the kind in the learning of a
language later, when at most one has six hours a week and generally
shares them with others. The child has another priceless advantage: he
hears the language in all possible situations and under such conditions
that language and situation ever correspond exactly to one another
and mutually illustrate one another. Gesture and facial expression
harmonize with the words uttered and keep the child to a right
understanding. Here there is nothing unnatural, such as is often the
case in a language-lesson in later years, when one talks about ice and
snow in June or excessive heat in January. And what the child hears is
just what immediately concerns him and interests him, and again and
again his own attempts at speech lead to the fulfilment of his dearest
wishes, so that his command of language has great practical advantages
for him.
Along with what he himself sees the use of, he hears a great deal which
does not directly concern him, but goes into the little brain and is
stored up there to turn up again later. Nothing is heard but leaves
its traces, and at times one is astonished to discover what has been
preserved, and with what exactness. One day, when Frans was 4.11 old,
he suddenly said: “Yesterday--isn’t there some who say yesterday?”
(giving _yesterday_ with the correct English pronunciation), and when I
said that it was an English word, he went on: “Yes, it is Mrs. B.: she
often says like that, yesterday.” Now, it was three weeks since that
lady had called at the house and talked English. It is a well-known
fact that hypnotized persons can sometimes say whole sentences in a
language which they do not know, but have merely heard in childhood.
In books about children’s language there are many remarkable accounts
of such linguistic memories which had lain buried for long stretches
of time. A child who had spent the first eighteen months of its life
in Silesia and then came to Berlin, where it had no opportunity of
hearing the Silesian pronunciation, at the age of five suddenly came
out with a number of Silesian expressions, which could not after the
most careful investigation be traced to any other source than to the
time before it could talk (Stern, 257 ff.). Grammont has a story of a
little French girl, whose nurse had talked French with a strong Italian
accent; the child did not begin to speak till a month after this nurse
had left, but pronounced many words with Italian sounds, and some of
these peculiarities stuck to the child till the age of three.
We may also remark that the baby’s teachers, though, regarded as
teachers of language, they may not be absolutely ideal, still have
some advantages over those one encounters as a rule later in life.
The relation between them and the child is far more cordial and
personal, just because they are not teachers first and foremost. They
are immensely interested in every little advance the child makes. The
most awkward attempt meets with sympathy, often with admiration, while
its defects and imperfections never expose it to a breath of unkind
criticism. There is a Slavonic proverb, “If you wish to talk well, you
must murder the language first.” But this is very often overlooked
by teachers of language, who demand faultless accuracy from the
beginning, and often keep their pupils grinding so long at some little
part of the subject that their desire to learn the language is weakened
or gone for good. There is nothing of this sort in the child’s first
learning of his language.
It is here that our distinction between the two periods comes in, that
of the child’s own separate ‘little language’ and that of the common or
social language. In the first period the little one is the centre of
a narrow circle of his own, which waits for each little syllable that
falls from his lips as though it were a grain of gold. What teachers
of languages in later years would rejoice at hearing such forms as we
saw before used in the time of the child’s ‘little language,’ _fant_
or _vat_ or _ham_ for ‘elephant’? But the mother really does rejoice:
she laughs and exults when he can use these syllables about his
toy-elephant, she throws the cloak of her love over the defects and
mistakes in the little one’s imitations of words, she remembers again
and again what his strange sounds stand for, and her eager sympathy
transforms the first and most difficult steps on the path of language
to the merriest game.
It would not do, however, for the child’s ‘little language’ and its
dreadful mistakes to become fixed. This might easily happen, if the
child were never out of the narrow circle of its own family, which
knows and recognizes its ‘little language.’ But this is stopped because
it comes more and more into contact with others--uncles and aunts, and
especially little cousins and playmates: more and more often it happens
that the mutilated words are not understood, and are corrected and made
fun of, and the child is incited in this way to steady improvement: the
‘little language’ gradually gives place to the ‘common language,’ as
the child becomes a member of a social group larger than that of his
own little home.
We have now probably found the chief reasons why a child learns his
mother-tongue better than even a grown-up person who has been for a
long time in a foreign country learns the language of his environment.
But it is also a contributory reason that the child’s linguistic needs,
to begin with, are far more limited than those of the man who wishes
to be able to talk about anything, or at any rate about something.
Much more is also linguistically required of the latter, and he must
have recourse to language to get all his needs satisfied, while the
baby is well looked after even if it says nothing but _wawawawa_. So
the baby has longer time to store up his impressions and continue his
experiments, until by trying again and again he at length gets his
lesson learnt in all its tiny details, while the man in the foreign
country, who _must_ make himself understood, as a rule goes on trying
only till he has acquired a form of speech which he finds natives
understand: at this point he will generally stop, at any rate as far as
pronunciation and the construction of sentences are concerned (while
his vocabulary may be largely increased). But this ‘just recognizable’
language is incorrect in thousands of small details, and, inasmuch
as bad little habits quickly become fixed, the kind of language is
produced which we know so well in the case of resident foreigners--who
need hardly open their lips before everyone knows they are not natives,
and before a practised ear can detect the country they hail from.[24]
VIII.--§ 2. Natural Ability and Sex.
An important factor in the acquisition of language which we have not
considered is naturally the individuality of the child. Parents are
apt to draw conclusions as to the abilities of their young hopeful
from the rapidity with which he learns to talk; but those who are
in despair because their Tommy cannot say a single word when their
neighbours’ Harry can say a great deal may take comfort. Slowness in
talking _may_ of course mean deficiency of ability, or even idiocy, but
not necessarily. A child who chatters early may remain a chatterer all
his life, and children whose motto is ‘Slow and sure’ may turn out the
deepest, most independent and most trustworthy characters in the end.
There are some children who cannot be made to say a single word for
a long time, and then suddenly come out with a whole sentence, which
shows how much has been quietly fructifying in their brain. Carlyle
was one of these: after eleven months of taciturnity he heard a child
cry, and astonished all by saying, “What ails wee Jock?” Edmund Gosse
has a similar story of his own childhood, and other examples have been
recorded elsewhere (Meringer, 194; Stern, 257).
The linguistic development of an individual child is not always in a
steady rising line, but in a series of waves. A child who seems to have
a boundless power of acquiring language suddenly stands still or even
goes back for a short time. The cause may be sickness, cutting teeth,
learning to walk, or often a removal to new surroundings or an open-air
life in summer. Under such circumstances even the word ‘I’ may be lost
for a time.
Some children develop very rapidly for some years until they have
reached a certain point, where they stop altogether, while others
retain the power to develop steadily to a much later age. It is the
same with some races: negro children in American schools may, while
they are little, be up to the standard of their white schoolfellows,
whom they cannot cope with in later life.
The two sexes differ very greatly in regard to speech--as in regard
to most other things. Little girls, on the average, learn to talk
earlier and more quickly than boys; they outstrip them in talking
correctly; their pronunciation is not spoilt by the many bad habits and
awkwardnesses so often found in boys. It has been proved by statistics
in many countries that there are far more stammerers and bad speakers
among boys and men than among girls and women. The general receptivity
of women, their great power of, and pleasure in, imitation, their
histrionic talent, if one may so say--all this is a help to them at an
early age, so that they can get into other people’s way of talking with
greater agility than boys of the same age.
Everything that is conventional in language, everything in which the
only thing of importance is to be in agreement with those around you,
is the girls’ strong point. Boys may often show a certain reluctance to
do exactly as others do: the peculiarities of their ‘little language’
are retained by them longer than by girls, and they will sometimes
steadily refuse to correct their own abnormalities, which is very
seldom the case with girls. Gaucherie and originality thus are two
points between which the speech of boys is constantly oscillating. Cf.
below, Ch. XIII.
VIII.--§ 3. Mother-tongue and Other Tongue.
The expression “mother-tongue” should not be understood too literally:
the language which the child acquires naturally is not, or not always,
his mother’s language. When a mother speaks with a foreign accent or in
a pronounced dialect, her children as a rule speak their language as
correctly as other children, or keep only the slightest tinge of their
mother’s peculiarities. I have seen this very distinctly in many Danish
families, in which the mother has kept up her Norwegian language all
her life, and in which the children have spoken pure Danish. Thus also
in two families I know, in which a strong Swedish accent in one mother,
and an unmistakable American pronunciation in the other, have not
prevented the children from speaking Danish exactly as if their mothers
had been born and bred in Denmark. I cannot, therefore, agree with
Passy, who says that the child learns his mother’s sound system (Ch §
32), or with Dauzat’s dictum to the same effect (V 20). The father, as
a rule, has still less influence; but what is decisive is the speech
of those with whom the child comes in closest contact from the age
of three or so, thus frequently servants, but even more effectually
playfellows of his own age or rather slightly older than himself, with
whom he is constantly thrown together for hours at a time and whose
prattle is constantly in his ears at the most impressionable age, while
he may not see and hear his father and mother except for a short time
every day, at meals and on such occasions. It is also a well-known fact
that the children of Danish parents in Greenland often learn the Eskimo
language before Danish; and Meinhof says that German children in the
African colonies will often learn the language of the natives earlier
than German (MSA 139).
This is by no means depreciating the mother’s influence, which is
strong indeed, but chiefly in the first period, that of the child’s
‘little language.’ But that is the time when the child’s imitative
power is weakest. His exact attention to the minutiæ of language
dates from the time when he is thrown into a wider circle and has to
make himself understood by many, so that his language becomes really
identical with that of the community, where formerly he and his mother
would rest contented with what _they_, but hardly anyone else, could
understand.
The influence of children on children cannot be overestimated.[25]
Boys at school make fun of any peculiarities of speech noticed in
schoolfellows who come from some other part of the country. Kipling
tells us in _Stalky and Co._ how Stalky and Beetle carefully _kicked_
McTurk out of his Irish dialect. When I read this, I was vividly
reminded of the identical method my new friends applied to me when at
the age of ten I was transplanted from Jutland to a school in Seeland
and excited their merriment through some Jutlandish expressions and
intonations. And so we may say that the most important factor in
spreading the common or standard language is children themselves.
It often happens that children who are compelled at home to talk
without any admixture of dialect talk pure dialect when playing with
their schoolfellows out of doors. They can keep the two forms of
speech distinct. In the same way they can learn two languages less
closely connected. At times this results in very strange blendings, at
least for a time; but many children will easily pass from one language
to the other without mixing them up, especially if they come in contact
with the two languages in different surroundings or on the lips of
different people.
It is, of course, an advantage for a child to be familiar with two
languages: but without doubt the advantage may be, and generally is,
purchased too dear. First of all the child in question hardly learns
either of the two languages as perfectly as he would have done if he
had limited himself to one. It may seem, on the surface, as if he
talked just like a native, but he does not really command the fine
points of the language. Has any bilingual child ever developed into a
great artist in speech, a poet or orator?
Secondly, the brain effort required to master two languages instead of
one certainly diminishes the child’s power of learning other things
which might and ought to be learnt. Schuchardt rightly remarks that if
a bilingual man has two strings to his bow, both are rather slack, and
that the three souls which the ancient Roman said he possessed, owing
to his being able to talk three different languages, were probably very
indifferent souls after all. A native of Luxemburg, where it is usual
for children to talk both French and German, says that few Luxemburgers
talk both languages perfectly. “Germans often say to us: ‘You speak
German remarkably well for a Frenchman,’ and French people will say,
‘They are Germans who speak our language excellently.’ Nevertheless, we
never speak either language as fluently as the natives. The worst of
the system is, that instead of learning things necessary to us we must
spend our time and energy in learning to express the same thought in
two or three languages at the same time.”[26]
VIII.--§ 4. Playing at Language.
The child takes delight in making meaningless sounds long after it has
learnt to talk the language of its elders. At 2.2 Frans amused himself
with long series of such sounds, uttered with the most confiding
look and proper intonation, and it was a joy to him when I replied
with similar sounds. He kept up this game for years. Once (4.11)
after such a performance he asked me: “Is that English?”--“No.”--“Why
not?”--“Because I understand English, but I do not understand what
you say.” An hour later he came back and asked: “Father, do you know
all languages?”--“No, there are many I don’t know.”--“Do you know
German?”--“Yes.” (Frans looked rather crestfallen: the servants had
often said of his invented language that he was talking German. So he
went on) “Do you know Japanese?”--“No.”--(Delighted) “So remember when
I say something you don’t understand, it’s Japanese.”
It is the same everywhere. Hawthorne writes: “Pearl mumbled something
into his ear, that sounded, indeed, like human language, but was only
such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with, by
the hour together” (_The Scarlet Letter_, 173). And R. L. Stevenson:
“Children prefer the shadow to the substance. When they might be
speaking intelligibly together, they chatter senseless gibberish by
the hour, and are quite happy because they are making believe to speak
French” (_Virginibus P._, 236; cf. Glenconner, p. 40; Stern, pp. 76,
91, 103). Meringer’s boy (2.1) took the music-book and sang a tune of
his own making with incomprehensible words.
Children also take delight in varying the sounds of real words,
introducing, for instance, alliterations, as “Sing a song of sixpence,
A socket full of sye,” etc. Frans at 2.3 amused himself by rounding
all his vowels (_o_ for _a_, _y_ for _i_), and at 3.1 by making
all words of a verse line he had learnt begin with _d_, then the
same words begin with _t_. O’Shea (p. 32) says that “most children
find pleasure in the production of variations upon some of their
familiar words. Their purpose seems to be to test their ability to
be original. The performance of an unusual act affords pleasure in
linguistics as in other matters. H., learning the word _dessert_, to
illustrate, plays with it for a time and exhibits it in a dozen or more
variations--_dĭssert_, _dishert_, _dĕsot_, _des'sert_, and so on.”
Rhythm and rime appeal strongly to the children’s minds. One English
observer says that “a child in its third year will copy the rhythm of
songs and verses it has heard in nonsense words.” The same thing is
noted by Meringer (p. 116) and Stern (p. 103). Tony E. (2.10) suddenly
made up the rime “My mover, I lov-er,” and Gordon M. (2.6) never tired
of repeating a phrase of his own composition, “Custard over mustard.” A
Danish girl of 3.1 is reported as having a “curious knack of twisting
all words into rimes: bestemor hestemor prestemor, Gudrun sludrun
pludrun, etc.”
VIII.--§ 5. Secret Languages.
Children, as we have seen, at first employ play-language for its own
sake, with no _arrière-pensée_, but as they get older they may see
that such language has the advantage of not being understood by their
elders, and so they may develop a ‘secret language’ consciously. Some
such languages are confined to one school, others may be in common
use among children of a certain age all over a country. ‘M-gibberish’
and ‘S-gibberish’ consist in inserting _m_ and _s_, as in _goming
mout tomdaym_ or _gosings outs tosdays_ for ‘going out to-day’;
‘Marrowskying’ or ‘Hospital Greek’ transfers the initial letters of
words, as _renty of plain_ for ‘plenty of rain,’ _flutterby_ for
‘butterfly’; ‘Ziph’ or ‘Hypernese’ (at Winchester) substitutes _wa_
for the first of two initial consonants and inserts _p_ or _g_, making
‘breeches’ into _wareechepes_ and ‘penny’ into _pegennepy_. From my own
boyhood in Denmark I remember two languages of this sort, in which a
sentence like ‘du er et lille asen’ became _dupu erper etpet lilpillepe
apasenpen_ and _durbe erbe erbe lirbelerbe arbeserbe_ respectively.
Closely corresponding languages, with insertion of _p_ and addition of
_-erbse_, are found in Germany; in Holland we find ‘de schoone Mei’
made into _depé schoopóonepé Meipéi_, besides an _-erwi-taal_ with a
variation in which the ending is _-erf_. In France such a language is
called _javanais_; ‘je vais bien’ is made into _je-de-que vais-dai-qai
bien-den-qen_. In Savoy the cowherds put _deg_ after each syllable
and thus make ‘a-te kogneu se vaçhi’ (‘as-tu connu ce vacher?’ in the
local dialect) into _a-degá te-dege ko-dego gnu-degu sé-degé va-dega
chi-degi?_ Nay, even among the Maoris of New Zealand there is a similar
secret language, in which instead of ‘kei te, haere au ki reira’ is
said _te-kei te-i-te te-haere-te-re te-a te-u te-ki te-re-te-i-te-ra_.
Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere.[27]
VIII.--§ 6. Onomatopœia.
Do children really create new words? This question has been much
discussed, but even those who are most skeptical in that respect
incline to allow them this power in the case of words which imitate
sounds. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the majority of
onomatopœic words heard from children are not their own invention, but
are acquired by them in the same way as other words. Hence it is that
such words have different forms in different languages. Thus to English
_cockadoodledoo_ corresponds French _coquerico_, German _kikeriki_ and
Danish _kykeliky_, to E. _quack-quack_, F. _cancan_, Dan. _raprap_,
etc. These words are an imperfect representation of the birds’ natural
cry, but from their likeness to it they are easier for the child to
seize than an entirely arbitrary name such as _duck_.
But, side by side with these, children do invent forms of their own,
though the latter generally disappear quickly in favour of the
traditional forms. Thus Frans (2.3) had coined the word _vakvak_, which
his mother had heard sometimes without understanding what he meant,
when one day he pointed at some crows while repeating the same word;
but when his mother told him that these birds were called _krager_, he
took hold of this word with eagerness and repeated it several times,
evidently recognizing it as a better name than his own. A little boy of
2.1 called soda-water _ft_, another boy said _ging_ or _gingging_ for a
clock, also for the railway train, while his brother said _dann_ for a
bell or clock; a little girl (1.9) said _pooh_ (whispered) for ‘match,
cigar, pipe,’ and _gagag_ for ‘hen,’ etc.
When once formed, such words may be transferred to other things, where
the sound plays no longer any rôle. This may be illustrated through two
extensions of the same word _bŏom_ or _bom_, used by two children first
to express the sound of something falling on the floor; then Ellen K.
(1.9) used it for a ‘blow,’ and finally for anything disagreeable, e.g.
soap in the eyes, while Kaare G. (1.8), after seeing a plate smashed,
used the word for a broken plate and afterwards for anything broken, a
hole in a dress, etc., also when a button had come off or when anything
else was defective in any way.
VIII.--§ 7. Word-inventions.
Do children themselves create words--apart from onomatopœic words? To
me there is no doubt that they do. Frans invented many words at his
games that had no connexion, or very little connexion, with existing
words. He was playing with a little twig when I suddenly heard him
exclaim: “This is called _lampetine_,” but a little while afterwards he
said _lanketine_, and then again _lampetine_, and then he said, varying
the play, “Now it is _kluatine_ and _traniklualalilua_” (3.6). A month
later I write: “He is never at a loss for a self-invented word; for
instance, when he has made a figure with his bricks which resembles
nothing whatever, he will say, ‘That shall be _lindam_.’” When he
played at trains in the garden, there were many stations with fanciful
names, and at one time he and two cousins had a word _kukukounen_ which
they repeated constantly and thought great fun, but whose inner meaning
I never succeeded in discovering. An English friend writes about his
daughter: “When she was about two and a quarter she would often use
some nonsense word in the middle of a perfectly intelligible sentence.
When you asked her its meaning she would explain it by another equally
unintelligible, and so on through a series as long as you cared to
make it.” At 2.10 she pretended she had lost her bricks, and when you
showed her that they were just by her, she insisted that they were not
‘bricks’ at all, but _mums_.
In all accounts of children’s talk you find words which cannot be
referred back to the normal language, but which have cropped up from
some unsounded depth of the child’s soul. I give a few from notes sent
to me by Danish friends: _goi_ ‘comb,’ _putput_ ‘stocking, or any other
piece of garment,’ _i-a-a_ ‘chocolate,’ _gön_ ‘water to drink, milk’
(kept apart from the usual word _vand_ for water, which she used only
for water to wash in), _hesh_ ‘newspaper, book.’ Some such words have
become famous in psychological literature because they were observed by
Darwin and Taine. Among less famous instances from other books I may
mention _tibu_ ‘bird’ (Strümpel), _adi_ ‘cake’ (Ament), _be’lum-be’lum_
‘toy with two men turning about,’ _wakaka_ ‘soldier,’ _nda_ ‘jar,’
_pamma_ ‘pencil,’ _bium_ ‘stocking’ (Meringer).
An American correspondent writes that his boy was fond of pushing a
stick over the carpet after the manner of a carpet-sweeper and called
the operation _jazing_. He coined the word _borkens_ as a name for a
particular sort of blocks with which he was accustomed to play. He was
a nervous child and his imagination created objects of terror that
haunted him in the dark, and to these he gave the name of _Boons_. This
name may, however, be derived from _baboons_. Mr. Harold Palmer tells
me that his daughter (whose native language was French) at an early
age used ['fu'wɛ] for ‘soap’ and [dɛ'dɛtʃ] for ‘horse, wooden horse,
merry-go-round.’
Dr. F. Poulsen, in his book _Rejser og rids_ (Copenhagen, 1920),
says about his two-year-old daughter that when she gets hold of her
mother’s fur-collar she will pet it and lavish on it all kinds of
tender self-invented names, such as _apu_ or _a-fo-me-me_. The latter
word, “which has all the melodious euphony and vague signification of
primitive language,” is applied to anything that is rare and funny
and worth rejoicing at. On a summer day’s excursion there was one new
_a-fo-me-me_ after the other.
In spite of all this, a point on which all the most distinguished
investigators of children’s language of late years are agreed is that
children never invent words. Wundt goes so far as to say that “the
child’s language is the result of the child’s environment, the child
being essentially a passive instrument in the matter” (S 1. 196)--one
of the most wrong-headed sentences I have ever read in the works of
a great scientist. Meumann says: “Preyer and after him almost every
careful observer among child-psychologists have strongly held the view
that it is impossible to speak of a child inventing a word.” Similarly
Meringer, L 220, Stern, 126, 273, 337 ff., Bloomfield, SL 12.
These investigators seem to have been led astray by expressions such as
‘shape out of nothing,’ ‘invent,’ ‘original creation’ (Urschöpfung),
and to have taken this doctrinaire attitude in partial defiance of the
facts they have themselves advanced. Expressions like those adduced
occur over and over again in their discussions, and Meumann says
openly: “Invention demands a methodical proceeding with intention, a
conception of an end to be realized.” Of course, if that is necessary
it is clear that we can speak of invention of words in the case of a
chemist seeking a word for a new substance, and not in the case of a
tiny child. But are there not many inventions in the technical world,
which we do not hesitate to call inventions, which have come about more
or less by chance? Wasn’t it so probably with gunpowder? According to
the story it certainly was so with blotting-paper: the foreman who had
forgotten to add size to a portion of writing-paper was dismissed, but
the manufacturer who saw that the paper thus spoilt could be turned to
account instead of the sand hitherto used made a fortune. So according
to Meumann blotting-paper has never been ‘invented.’ If in order to
acknowledge a child’s creation of a word we are to postulate that it
has been produced out of nothing, what about bicycles, fountain-pens,
typewriters--each of which was something existing before, carried
just a little further? Are they on that account not inventions?
One would think not, when one reads these writers on children’s
language, for as soon as the least approximation to a word in the
normal language is discovered, the child is denied both ‘invention’
and ‘the speech-forming faculty’! Thus Stern (p. 338) says that his
daughter in her second year used some words which might be taken as
proof of the power to create words, but for the fact that it was here
possible to show how these ‘new’ words had grown out of normal words.
_Eischei_, for instance, was used as a verb meaning ‘go, walk,’ but it
originated in the words _eins, zwei_ (one, two) which were said when
the child was taught to walk. Other examples are given comparable to
those mentioned above (106, 115) as mutilations of the first period.
Now, even if all those words given by myself and others as original
inventions of children could be proved to be similar perversions of
‘real’ words (which is not likely), I should not hesitate to speak of
a word-creating faculty, for _eischei_, ‘to walk,’ is both in form and
still more in meaning far enough from _eins, zwei_ to be reckoned a
totally new word.
We can divide words ‘invented’ by children into three classes:
A. The child gives both sound and meaning.
B. The grown-up people give the sound, and the child the meaning.
C. The child gives the sound, grown-up people the meaning.
But the three classes cannot always be kept apart, especially when
the child imitates the grown-up person’s sound so badly or seizes
the meaning so imperfectly that very little is left of what the
grown-up person gives. As a rule, the self-created words will be very
short-lived; still, there are exceptions.
O’Shea’s account of one of these words is very instructive. “She had
also a few words of her own coining which were attached spontaneously
to objects, and these her elders took up, and they became fixed in her
vocabulary for a considerable period. A word resembling _Ndobbin_ was
employed for every sort of thing which she used for food. The word
came originally from an accidental combination of sounds made while
she was eating. By the aid of the people about her in responding to
this term and repeating it, she ‘selected’ it and for a time used it
purposefully. She employed it at the outset for a specific article of
food; then her elders extended it to other articles, and this aided
her in making the extension herself. Once started in this process,
she extended the term to many objects associated with her food,
even objects as remote from her original experience as dining-room,
high-chair, kitchen, and even apple and plum trees” (O’Shea, 27).
To Class A I assign most of the words already given as the child’s
creations, whether the child be great or small.
Class B is that which is most sparsely represented. A child in Finland
often heard the well-known line about King Karl (Charles XII), “Han
stod i rök och damm” (“He stood in smoke and dust”), and taking _rö_
to be the adjective meaning ‘red,’ imagined the remaining syllables,
which he heard as _kordamm_, to be the name of some piece of garment.
This amused his parents so much that _kordamm_ became the name of a
dressing-gown in that family.
To Class C, where the child contributes only the sound and the older
people give a meaning to what on the child’s side was meaningless--a
process that reminds one of the invention of blotting-paper--belong
some of the best-known words, which require a separate section.
VIII.--§ 8. ‘Mamma’ and ‘Papa.’
In the nurseries of all countries a little comedy has in all ages
been played--the baby lies and babbles his ‘mamama’ or ‘amama’ or
‘papapa’ or ‘apapa’ or ‘bababa’ or ‘ababab’ without associating the
slightest meaning with his mouth-games, and his grown-up friends,
in their joy over the precocious child, assign to these syllables a
rational sense, accustomed as they are themselves to the fact of an
uttered sound having a content, a thought, an idea, corresponding to
it. So we get a whole class of words, distinguished by a simplicity
of sound-formation--never two consonants together, generally the same
consonant repeated with an _a_ between, frequently also with an _a_ at
the end--words found in many languages, often in different forms, but
with essentially the same meaning.
First we have words for ‘mother.’ It is very natural that the mother
who is greeted by her happy child with the sound ‘mama’ should take it
as though the child were _calling_ her ‘mama,’ and since she frequently
comes to the cradle when she hears the sound, the child himself does
learn to use these syllables when he wants to call her. In this way
they become a recognized word for the idea ‘mother’--now with the
stress on the first syllable, now on the second. In French we get a
nasal vowel either in the last syllable only or in both syllables. At
times we have only one syllable, _ma_. When once these syllables have
become a regular word they follow the speech laws which govern other
words; thus among other forms we get the German _muhme_, the meaning
of which (‘aunt’) is explained as in the words mentioned, p. 118. In
very early times _ma_ in our group of languages was supplied with a
termination, so that we get the form underlying Greek _mētēr_, Lat.
_mater_ (whence Fr. _mère_, etc.), our own _mother_, G. _mutter_, etc.
These words became the recognized grown-up words, while _mama_ itself
was only used in the intimacy of the family. It depends on fashion,
however, how ‘high up’ _mama_ can be used: in some countries and in
some periods children are allowed to use it longer than in others.
The forms _mama_ and _ma_ are not the only ones for ‘mother.’ The
child’s _am_ has also been seized and maintained by the grown-ups.
The Albanian word for ‘mother’ is _ama_, the Old Norse word for
‘grandmother’ is _amma_. The Latin _am-ita_, formed from _am_ with
a termination added, came to mean ‘aunt’ and became in OFr. _ante_,
whence E. _aunt_ and Modern Fr. _tante_. In Semitic languages the words
for ‘mother’ also have a vowel before _m_: Assyrian _ummu_, Hebrew
_’êm_, etc.
_Baba_, too, is found in the sense ‘mother,’ especially in Slavonic
languages, though it has here developed various derivative meanings,
‘old woman,’ ‘grandmother,’ or ‘midwife.’ In Tonga we have _bama_
‘mother.’
Forms with _n_ are also found for ‘mother’; so Sanskrit _naná_,
Albanian _nane_. Here we have also Gr. _nannē_ ‘aunt’ and Lat. _nonna_;
the latter ceased in the early Middle Ages to mean ‘grandmother’ and
became a respectful way of addressing women of a certain age, whence
we know it as _nun_, the feminine counterpart of ‘monk.’ From less
known languages I may mention Greenlandic _a'na·na_ ‘mother,’ _'a·na_
‘grandmother.’
Now we come to words meaning ‘father,’ and quite naturally, where the
sound-groups containing _m_ have already been interpreted in the sense
‘mother,’ a word for ‘father’ will be sought in the syllables with
_p_. It is no doubt frequently noticed in the nursery that the baby
says _mama_ where one expected _papa_, and vice versa; but at last he
learns to deal out the syllables ‘rightly,’ as we say. The history
of the forms _papa_, _pappa_ and _pa_ is analogous to the history of
the _m_ syllables already traced. We have the same extension of the
sound by _tr_ in the word _pater_, which according to recognized laws
of sound-change is found in the French _père_, the English _father_,
the Danish _fader_, the German _vater_, etc. Philologists no longer,
fortunately, derive these words from a root _pa_ ‘to protect,’ and
see therein a proof of the ‘highly moral spirit’ of our aboriginal
ancestors, as Fick and others did. _Papa_, as we know, also became an
honourable title for a reverend ecclesiastic, and hence comes the name
which we have in the form _Pope_.
Side by side with the p forms we have forms in _b_--Italian _babbo_,
Bulgarian _babá_, Serbian _bába_, Turkish _baba_. Beginning with the
vowel we have the Semitic forms _ab_, _abu_ and finally _abba_, which
is well known, since through Greek _abbas_ it has become the name for
a spiritual father in all European languages, our form being _Abbot_.
Again, we have some names for ‘father’ with dental sounds: Sanskrit
_tatá_, Russian _tata_, _tyatya_, Welsh _tat_, etc. The English _dad_,
now so universal, is sometimes considered to have been borrowed from
this Welsh word, which in certain connexions has an initial _d_, but
no doubt it had an independent origin. In Slavonic languages _déd_ is
extensively used for ‘grandfather’ or ‘old man.’ Thus also _deite_,
_teite_ in German dialects. _Tata_ ‘father’ is found in Congo and other
African languages, also (_tatta_) in Negro-English (Surinam). And just
as words for ‘mother’ change their meaning from ‘mother’ to ‘aunt,’
so these forms in some languages come to mean ‘uncle’: Gr. _theios_
(whence Italian _zio_), Lithuanian _dede_, Russian _dyadya_.
With an initial vowel we get the form _atta_, in Greek used in
addressing old people, in Gothic the ordinary word for ‘father,’ which
with a termination added gives the proper name _Attila_, originally
‘little father’; with another ending we have Russian _otec_. Outside
our own family of languages we find, for instance, Magyar _atya_,
Turkish _ata_, Basque _aita_, Greenlandic _a'ta·ta_ ‘father,’ while in
the last-mentioned language _a·ta_ means ‘grandfather.’[28]
The nurse, too, comes in for her share in these names, as she too
is greeted by the child’s babbling and is tempted to take it as the
child’s name for her; thus we get the German and Scandinavian _amme_,
Polish _niania_, Russian _nyanya_, cf. our _Nanny_. These words cannot
be kept distinct from names for ‘aunt,’ cf. _amita_ above, and in
Sanskrit we find _mama_ for ‘uncle.’
It is perhaps more doubtful if we can find a name for the child
itself which has arisen in the same way; the nearest example is the
Engl. _babe_, _baby_, German _bube_ (with _u_ as in _muhme_ above);
but _babe_ has also been explained as a word derived normally from
OFr. _baube_, from Lat. _balbus_ ‘stammering.’ When the name _Bab_
or _Babs_ (_Babbe_ in a Danish family) becomes the pet-name for a
little girl, this has no doubt come from an interpretation put on her
own meaningless sounds. Ital. _bambo_ (_bambino_) certainly belongs
here. We may here mention also some terms for ‘doll,’ Lat. _pupa_ or
_puppa_, G. _puppe_; with a derivative ending we have Fr. _poupée_,
E. _puppet_ (Chaucer, A 3254, _popelote_). These words have a rich
semantic development, cf. _pupa_ (Dan. _puppe_, etc.) ‘chrysalis,’
and the diminutive Lat. _pupillus_, _pupilla_, which was used for ‘a
little child, minor,’ whence E. _pupil_ ‘disciple,’ but also for the
little child seen in the eye, whence E. (and other languages) _pupil_,
‘central opening of the eye.’
A child has another main interest--that is, in its food, the breast,
the bottle, etc. In many countries it has been observed that very
early a child uses a long _m_ (without a vowel) as a sign that it
wants something, but we can hardly be right in supposing that the
sound is originally meant by children in this sense. They do not use
it consciously till they see that grown-up people on hearing the
sound come up and find out what the child wants. And it is the same
with the developed forms which are uttered by the child in its joy at
getting something to eat, and which are therefore interpreted as the
child’s expression for food: _am_, _mam_, _mammam_, or the same words
with a final _a_--that is, really the same groups of sounds which
came to stand for ‘mother.’ The determination of a particular form to
a particular meaning is always due to the adults, who, however, can
subsequently _teach_ it to the child. Under this heading comes the
sound _ham_, which Taine observed to be one child’s expression for
hunger or thirst (_h_ mute?), and similarly the word _mum_, meaning
‘something to eat,’ invented, as we are told, by Darwin’s son and
often uttered with a rising intonation, as in a question, ‘Will you
give me something to eat?’ Lindner’s child (1.5) is said to have
used _papp_ for everything eatable and _mem_ or _möm_ for anything
drinkable. In normal language we have forms like Sanskrit _māmsa_
(Gothic _mimz_) and _mās_ ‘flesh,’ our own _meat_ (which formerly,
like Dan. _mad_, meant any kind of food), German _mus_ ‘jam’ (whence
also _gemüse_), and finally Lat. _mandere_ and _manducare_, ‘to chew’
(whence Fr. _manger_)--all developments of this childish _ma(m)_.
As the child’s first nourishment is its mother’s breast, its joyous
_mamama_ can also be taken to mean the breast. So we have the Latin
_mamma_ (with a diminutive ending _mammilla_, whence Fr. _mamelle_),
and with the other labial sound Engl. _pap_, Norwegian and Swed. dial.
_pappe_, Lat. _papilla_; with a different vowel, It. _poppa_, Fr.
_poupe_, ‘teat of an animal, formerly also of a woman’; with _b_, G.
_bübbi_, obsolete E. _bubby_; with a dental, E. _teat_ (G. _zitze_),
Ital. _tetta_, Dan. _titte_, Swed. dial. _tatte_. Further we have words
like E. _pap_ ‘soft food,’ Latin _papare_ ‘to eat,’ orig. ‘to suck,’
and some G. forms for the same, _pappen_, _pampen_, _pampfen_. Perhaps
the beginning of the word _milk_ goes back to the baby’s _ma_ applied
to the mother’s breast or milk; the latter half may then be connected
with Lat. _lac_. In Greenlandic we have _ama·ma_ ‘suckle.’
Inseparable from these words is the sound, a long _m_ or _am_, which
expresses the child’s delight over something that tastes good; it has
by-forms in the Scotch _nyam_ or _nyamnyam_, the English seaman’s term
_yam_ ‘to eat,’ and with two dentals the French _nanan_ ‘sweetmeats.’
Some linguists will have it that the Latin _amo_ ‘I love’ is derived
from this _am_, which expresses pleasurable satisfaction. When a father
tells me that his son (1.10) uses the wonderful words _nananæi_ for
‘chocolate’ and _jajajaja_ for picture-book, we have no doubt here also
a case of a grown person’s interpretation of the originally meaningless
sounds of a child.
Another meaning that grown-up people may attach to syllables uttered by
the child is that of ‘good-bye,’ as in English _tata_, which has now
been incorporated in the ordinary language.[29] Stern probably is right
when he thinks that the French _adieu_ would not have been accepted
so commonly in Germany and other countries if it had not accommodated
itself so easily, especially in the form commonly used in German,
_ade_, to the child’s natural word.
There are some words for ‘bed, sleep’ which clearly belong to this
class: Tuscan _nanna_ ‘cradle,’ Sp. _hacer la nana_ ‘go to sleep,’
E. _bye-bye_ (possibly associated with _good-bye_, instead of which
is also said _byebye_); Stern mentions _baba_ (Berlin), _beibei_
(Russian), _bobo_ (Malay), but _bischbisch_, which he also gives here,
is evidently (like the Danish _visse_) imitative of the sound used for
hushing.
Words of this class stand in a way outside the common words of
a language, owing to their origin and their being continually
new-created. One cannot therefore deduce laws of sound-change from
them in their original shape; and it is equally wrong to use them as
evidence for an original kinship between different families of language
and to count them as loan-words, as is frequently done (for example,
when the Slavonic _baba_ is said to be borrowed from Turkish). The
English _papa_ and _mam(m)a_, and the same words in German and Danish,
Italian, etc., are almost always regarded as borrowed from French; but
Cauer rightly points out that Nausikaa (_Odyssey_ 6. 57) addresses her
father as _pappa fil_, and Homer cannot be suspected of borrowing from
French. Still, it is true that fashion may play a part in deciding how
long children may be permitted to say _papa_ and _mamma_, and a French
fashion may in this respect have spread to other European countries,
especially in the seventeenth century. We may not find these words in
early use in the _literatures_ of the different countries, but this
is no proof that the words were not used in the nursery. As soon as a
word of this class has somewhere got a special application, this can
very well pass as a loan-word from land to land--as we saw in the case
of the words _abbot_ and _pope_. And it may be granted with respect
to the primary use of the words that there are certain national or
quasi-national customs which determine what grown people expect to hear
from babies, so that one nation expects and recognizes _papa_, another
_dad_, a third _atta_, for the meaning ‘father.’
When the child hands something to somebody or reaches out for something
he will generally say something, and if, as often happens, this is
_ta_ or _da_, it will be taken by its parents and others as a real
word, different according to the language they speak; in England as
_there_ or _thanks_, in Denmark as _tak_ ‘thanks’[30] or _tag_ ‘take,’
in Germany as _da_ ‘there,’ in France as _tiens_ ‘hold,’ in Russia as
_day_ ‘give,’ in Italy as _to_, (= _togli_) ‘take.’ The form _tê_ in
Homer is interpreted by some as an imperative of _teinō_ ‘stretch.’
These instances, however, are slightly different in character from
those discussed in the main part of this chapter.[31]
FOOTNOTES:
[23]
Women know
The way to rear up children, (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words,
Which things are corals to cut life upon,
Although such trifles: children learn by such
Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play
And get not over-early solemnized ...
Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well
--Mine did, I know--but still with heavier brains,
And wills more consciously responsible,
And not as wisely, since less foolishly.
ELIZABETH BROWNING: _Aurora Leigh_, 10.
[24] This is not the place to speak of the way in which prevalent
methods of teaching foreign languages can be improved. A slavish
copying of the manner in which English children learn English is
impracticable, and if it were practicable it would demand more time
than anyone can devote to the purpose. One has to make the most of
the advantages which the pupils possess over babies, thus, their
being able to read, their power of more sustained attention, etc.
Phonetic explanation of the new sounds and phonetic transcription have
done wonders to overcome difficulties of pronunciation. But in other
respects it is possible to some extent to assimilate the teaching of
a foreign language to the method pursued by the child in its first
years: one should not merely sprinkle the pupil, but plunge him right
down into the sea of language and enable him to swim by himself as
soon as possible, relying on the fact that a great deal will arrange
itself in the brain without the inculcation of too many special rules
and explanations. For details I may refer to my book, _How to Teach a
Foreign Language_ (London, George Allen and Unwin).
[25] Hence, also, the second or third child in a family will, as a
rule, learn to speak more rapidly than the eldest.
[26] I translate this from Ido, see _The International Language_, May
1912.
[27] I have collected a bibliographical list of such ‘secret languages’
in _Nord. Tidsskrift f. Filologi_, 4r. vol. 5.
[28] I subjoin a few additional examples. Basque _aita_ ‘father,’ _ama_
‘mother,’ _anaya_ ‘brother’ (_Zeitsch. f. rom. Phil._ 17, 146). Manchu
_ama_ ‘father,’ _eme_ ‘mother’ (the vowel relation as in _haha_ ‘man,’
_hehe_ ‘woman,’ Gabelentz, S 389). Kutenai _pa·_ ‘brother’s daughter,’
_papa_ ‘grandmother (said by male), grandfather, grandson,’ _pat!_
‘nephew,’ _ma_ ‘mother,’ _nana_ ‘younger sister’ (of girl), _alnana_
‘sisters,’ _tite_ ‘mother-in-law,’ _titu_ ‘father’ (of male)--(Boas,
_Kutenai Tales_, Bureau of Am. Ethnol. 59, 1918). Cf. also Sapir,
“Kinship Terms of the Kootenay Indians” (_Amer. Anthropologist_, vol.
20). In the same writer’s _Yana Terms of Relationship_ (Univ. of
California, 1918) there seems to be very little from this source.
[29] _Tata_ is also used for ‘a walk’ (to go out for a ta-ta, or to go
out ta-tas) and for ‘a hat’--meanings that may very well have developed
from the child’s saying these syllables when going out or preparing to
go out.
[30] The Swede Bolin says that his child said _tatt-tatt_, which he
interprets as _tack_, even when handing something to others.
[31] The views advanced in § 8 have some points in contact with the
remarks found in Stern’s ch. xix, p. 300, only that I lay more stress
on the arbitrary interpretation of the child’s meaningless syllables on
the part of the grown-ups, and that I cannot approve his theory of the
_m_ syllables as ‘centripetal’ and the _p_ syllables as ‘centrifugal
affective-volitional natural sounds.’ Paul (P § 127) says that the
nursery-language with its _bowwow_, _papa_, _mama_, etc., “is not
the invention of the children; it is handed over to them just as any
other language”; he overlooks the share children have themselves in
these words, or in some of them; nor are they, as he says, formed by
the grown-ups with a purely pedagogical purpose. Nor can I find that
Wundt’s chapter “Angebliche worterfindung des kindes” (S 1. 273-287)
contains decisive arguments. Curtius (K 88) thinks that Gr. _patēr_
was first shortened into _pâ_ and this then extended into _páppa_--but
certainly it is rather the other way round.