Another remarkable observation is the following from the fifteenth month. It reminds one of the behavior of hypnotized adults. On her grandmother's birthday the child said some rhymes that she did not easily remember (there were six short verses, thirty-four words). One night soon after the birthday festival the little girl said off the verses, "almost for the first time without any stumbling, in her sleep."
From this we see how much more quickly in regard to articulation and independent use of words both these girls (the first of whom weighed only six pounds at birth) learned to speak than did Sigismund's boy, my own boy, and others.
Darwin observed (A Biographical Sketch of an Infantin "Mind, a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy," July, 1877, pp. 285-294) in a son of his, on the forty-seventh day of his life, a formation of sounds without meaning. The child took pleasure in it. The sounds soon became manifold. In the sixth month he uttered the sounddawithout any meaning; but in the fifth he probably began to try to imitate sounds. In the tenth month the imitation of sounds was unmistakable. In the twelfth he could readily imitate all sorts of actions, such as shaking his head and saying "Ah." He also understood intonations, gestures, several words, and short sentences. When exactly seven months old, the child associated his nurse with her name, so that when it was called out he would look round for her. In the thirteenth month the boy used gestures to explain his wishes; for instance,he picked up a bit of paper and gave it to his father, pointing to the fire, as he had often seen and liked to see paper burned. At exactly the age of a year he called foodmum, which also signified "Give me food," and he used this word instead of beginning to cry as formerly. This word with affixes signified particular things to eat; thusshu-mumsignified sugar, and a little later licorice was calledblack-shu-mum. When asking for food by the wordmumhe gave to it a very strongly marked tone of longing (Darwin says an "interrogatory sound," which should mean the same thing). It is remarkable that my child also, and in the tenth week for the first time, saidmömmwhen he was hungry, and that a child observed by Fritz Schultze (Dresden) saidmäm-mäm. Probably the syllable has its origin from the primitive syllablemaand from hearing the word "mamma" when placed at the breast of the mother.
Of the facts communicated by the physiologist Vierordt concerning the language of the child ("Deutsche Revue" of January, 1879, Berlin, pp. 29-46) should be mentioned this, that a babe in its second month expressed pleasure by the vowela, the opposite feeling byä. This is true of many other children also. In the third and fourth months the following syllables were recognizable:mam,ämma,fu,pfu,ess,äng,angka,acha,erra,hab. A lisping babe said, countless times,hab,hob,ha. These syllables coincide in part with those given by other observers. Thepfandssonly have not been heard by me at this age, and I doubt whetherf, for which teeth are needed, was produced with purity so early. In the second and third years a child pronounced the following words:beb(for bös, naughty);bebe(Besen,beesann, broom);webbe(Wasser,watja, water);wewe(Löwe,löwee, lion);ewebau(Elephant,elafant);webenau(Fledermaus,lebamaunz,bat);babaube(Blasebalg,ba-abats, bellows);ade(Hase, hare);emele(Schemel, footstool);gigod(Schildkröte, tortoise).
These examples illustrate very well the mogilalia and paralalia that exist in every child, but with differences in each individual. Sigmatism and parasigmatism and paralambdacism are strongly marked. At the same time the influence of dialect is perceptible (Tübingen). The pronunciations given in parentheses in the above instances were regularly used by my boy in his twenty-sixth month when he saw the pictures of the objects named in his picture-book. (In Jena.) One would not suppose beforehand thatwatjaandwebbehave the same meaning. >From the ten examples may be seen, further, thatf,l,r,s,tpresent more difficulties of articulation thanb,w,m,g, andd; but neither must this be made a general conclusion. Thew(on account of the teeth) regularly comes later than theb,m, andr.
In the third year Vierordt noted down the following narration. I put in brackets the words omitted by the child:
(There were once a mama and a papa, and they had two children. And the children went into the woods and fetched wood. Then they came to a little sugar house and ate. Then the witch said: "Nucker, Nucker Neisle, who is crawling in my little house?" Then the children said: "The wind, the wind, the heavenly child"—The wind, the heavenly, heavenly wind.)
(There were once a mama and a papa, and they had two children. And the children went into the woods and fetched wood. Then they came to a little sugar house and ate. Then the witch said: "Nucker, Nucker Neisle, who is crawling in my little house?" Then the children said: "The wind, the wind, the heavenly child"—The wind, the heavenly, heavenly wind.)
I told the same story to my boy for the first time when he was two years and eighteen days old. He repeated, with an effort:
Ess ets aine mama unn ain papa edam (wesen).
unn (unt) diesa abn wais (twai) kinna (tinder) ghatf (dehappt).
unn die kinna sint (dsint) in den walt tegang (gangen).
unn-daben (habn) holz (olz) gehōl (ohlt).
dann sint (dsint) sie an ain utsom-händom (zuke-häussn) zezan (gangn).
unn (unt) habn (abn) ge ... (dessen).
dann hatt die hetse (hekksee) dsa (tsakt).
nanuck (nuke nuke) nana nainle (naisle).
wer ... (drabbelt) mir am häultje (äusle).
dann baben (habn) die ... (tinder) ze-a (dsagt).
der wiĕds (wind) ... (der fint).
dsēr wenn daz (das) himmelä (immlis) khint (tint).
Where the periods are, his attempts were all vain. At any rate, he would saypta-ptaas he usually did in fruitless efforts at imitating sounds. Just two months after these first attempts, the same child recited for me the narrative, using the expressions in the parentheses; this indicated a distinct progress in articulation. A year after the first attempt, he easily repeated the whole, with only a single error. He still saidhimmelä, and thenhimmliss, for "himmlische."
A third boy (Düsseldorf) repeated the narrative much better, as early as his twenty-fifth month. He made only the following errors, which were noted by his mother, and kindly communicated by her to me:
Thessbetween two vowels was imperfect, reminding one of the English "th" and the German "sch" and "s." The child could not at this time be brought to learn by heart.
We see, from these three versions, how unequal the capacity for articulation is in its development, and how varied it is in regard to the omission of difficult consonants and the substitution of others in place of them, as well as in regard to transposition, e. g., inwand,walt,wlad(Wald),wenn,wid,wiĕds,fint(Wind)—and this even in the same individual.
As no one thus far has instituted comparisons of this sort, one more example may be given. The verses taught by Sigismund to his child (for whom I use the sign S) of twenty-one months, were often repeated by my boy (A), of twenty-five months, to me, and by the boy from Düsseldorf (D), in his twenty-fifth month, to his mother:
The errors are very unlike, and are characteristic for each child. The fact that in the case of A the errors diminished by half within two months is to be explained by frequency of recitation. I may add that the inclination to recite was so often lacking that a good deal of pains was required to bring the child to it.
From the vocabulary of the second year of the child'slife, according to the observations of Sigismund and myself, the following words of frequent use are also worthy of notice:
Sigismund noticed the following names of animals (in imitation of words given to the children):bä,put,gikgak,wäkwäk,huhu,ihz(Hinz). I did not find these with my child. Sigismund likewise observedbaie-baiefor Wiege (cradle), which my child was not acquainted with;päpäfor verborgen (hidden);eichöntenfor Eichhörnchen(squirrel);äpftenfor Äpfelchen (little apple);mädsenandmädisfor Mädchen (girl);atattfor Bernhard;hundisfor Hundchen, the Thüringian form of Hündchen (little dog);potfor Topf (pot);dotfor dort (yonder). On the other hand, both children usedwehwehfor Schmerz (pain);caputfor zerbrochen (broken to pieces);schoos,soossfor "auf den Schooss möcht ich" (I want to get up in the lap);auffor "hinauf möchte ich gehoben werden" (I want to be taken up);toichfor Storch (stork);tulfor Stuhl (chair). A third child in my presence called his grandmothermama-mama, i. e., twice-mamma, in distinction from the mother. This, however, does not necessarily imply a gift for invention, as the expression "Mamma's Mamma" may have been used of the grandmother in speaking to the child.
Other children of the same age do very much the same. The boy D, though he repeated cleverly what was said, was not good at naming objects when he was expected to do this of himself. He would say, e. g.,pillafor Spiegel (mirror). At this same period (twenty-five months) he could not yet give the softened or liquid sound of consonants (mouilliren). He saidnandiandavery plainly, and alsoi-a, but notnja, and not once "ja"; but, on the contrary, always turned away angrily when his father or I, or others, required it of him. But as late as the twenty-eighth month echolalia was present in the highest degree in this very vigorous and intelligent child, for he would at times repeat mechanically the last word of every sentence spoken in his hearing, and even a single word, e. g., when some one asked "Warum?" (why) he likewise saidwarumwithout answering the question, and he continued to do it for days again and again in a vacant way, with and without the tone of interrogation (which he did not understand). From this we see again plainly that theimitation of sounds is independent of the understanding of them, but is dependent on the functions of articulation.
These functions are discussed by themselves in the work of Prof. Fritz Schultze, of Dresden, "Die Sprache des Kindes" ("The Language of the Child," Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the "principle of the least effort." He thinks the child begins with the sounds that are made with the least physiological effort, and proceeds gradually to the more difficult sounds, i. e., those which require more "labor of nerve and muscle." This "law" is nothing else than the "loi du moindre effort" which is to be traced back to Maupertuis, and which was long ago applied to the beginnings of articulation in children: e. g., by Buffon in 1749 ("Œuvres complètes," Paris, 1844, iv, pp. 68, 69), and, in spite of Littré, again quite recently by B. Perez[F]("Les trois premières Années de l'Enfant," Paris, 1878, pp. 228-230,seq.) But this supposed "law" is opposed by many facts which have been presented in this chapter and the preceding one. The impossibility of determining the degree of "physiological effort" required for each separate sound in the child, moreover, is well known. Besides, every sound may be produced with very unequal expenditure of force; but the facts referred to are enough for refutation of the theory. According to Schultze, e. g., the vowels ought, in the process of development of the child's speech, to appear in the following order, separated in time by long intervals: 1. Ä; 2. A; 3. U; 4. O; 5. E; 6. I; 7. Ö; 8. Ü. It is correct thatäis one of the vowels that may be first plainly distinguished; but neither is it the first vowel audible—on the contrary, the first audible vowel is indistinct, and imperfectly articulated vowels are the first—nor can we admit thatäis produced with less of effort than isa. The reverse is the case. Further,öis said to present "enormous difficulties," and hence has the place next to the last; but I have often heard theö, short and long, perfectly pure in the second month, long before thei, and that not in my child alone. From the observations upon the latter, the order of succession appears to be the following: Indeterminate vowels,u,ä,a,ö,o,ai,ao,i,e,ü,oeu(French sound in cœur),au,oi. Thus, for the above eight vowels, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, the order 3, 1, 2, 7, 4, 6, 5, 8, so that onlyiandükeep their place. But other children give a varying order, and these differences in the order of succession of vowels as well as of consonants will certainly not be referred to the "influence of heredity." Two factors of quite another sort are, on the contrary, to be taken into account here in the case of every normal child without exception, apart from the unavoidable errors in every assigned order growing out of incomplete observation. In the earliest period and when the babbling monologues begin, the cavity of the mouth takes on an infinitely manifold variety of forms—the lips, tongue, lower jaw, larynx, are moved, and in a greater variety of ways than ever afterward. At the same time there is expiration, often loud expiration, and thus originates entirely at random sometimes one sound, sometimes another. The childhearssounds and tones new to him, hears his own voice, takes pleasure in it, and delights in making sounds, as he does in moving his limbs in the bath. It is natural that he should find more pleasure in some sounds, in others less. The first are more frequently made by him on account of the motor memories that are associated with the acoustic memories, and an observer does not hear theothers at all if he observes the child only from time to time. In fact, however, almost all simple sounds, even the most difficult, are formed in purity before they are used in speaking in the first eight months—most frequently those that give the child pleasure, that satisfy his desires, or lessen his discomfort. It is not to be forgotten that even theä, which requires effort on account of the drawing back and spreading out of the tongue, diminishes discomfort. The fretful babe feels better when he criesu-äthan when he keeps silent. The second factor is determined by the surroundings of the child. Those sounds which the child distinctly hears he will be able to imitate correctly sooner than he will other sounds: but he will be in condition to hear most correctly, first of all, the sounds that are most frequent, just because these most frequently excite the auditory nerve and its tract in the brain; secondly, among these sounds that are acoustically most sharply defined, viz., first the vowels, then the resonants (m, n, ng); last, the compound "friction-sounds" (fl, schl). But it is only in part that the surroundings determine this order of succession for the sounds. Another thing that partly determines and modifies this order is the child's own unwearied practice in forming consonant-sounds. He hears his own voice now better than he did at an earlier period when he was forming vowels only. He most easily retains and repeats, among the infinitely manifold consonants that are produced by loud expiration, those which have been distinctly heard by him. This is owing to the association of the motor and the acoustic memory-image in the brain. These are the most frequent in his speech. Not until later does the mechanical difficulty of articulation exert an influence, and this comes in at the learning of the compound sounds. Hence there can not be any chronological order of succession of sounds that holdsgood universally in the language of the child, because each language has a different order in regard to the frequency of appearance of the sounds; but heredity can have no influence here, because every child of average gifts, though it may hear from its birth a language unknown to its ancestors, if it hears no other, yet learns to speak this language perfectly. What is hereditary is the great plasticity of the entire apparatus of speech, the voice, and with it a number of sounds that are not acquired, asm. An essential reason for the defective formation of sounds in children born deaf is the fact that they do not hear their own voice. This defect may also be hereditary.
The treatise of F. Schultze contains, besides, many good remarks upon thetechniqueof the language of the child, but, as they are of inferior psychogenetic interest, they need not be particularly mentioned here. Others of them are only partially confirmed by the observations, as is shown by a comparison with what follows.
Gustav Lindner ("Twelfth Annual Report of the Lehrer-seminars at Zschopau," 1882, p. 13) heard from his daughter, in her ninth week,arraorärrä, which was uttered for months. Alsoäcknappeared early. The principle of the least effort Lindner finds to be almost absolutely refuted by his observations. He rightly remarks that the frequent repetitions of the same groups of sounds, in the babbling monologues, are due in part to a kind of pleasure in success, such as urges adults also to repeat their successful efforts. Thus his child used to imitate the reading of the newspaper (in the second half-year) bydegattegattegatte. In the eleventh and twelfth months the following were utterances of hers in repeating words heard:ómama,oia(Rosa),batta(Bertha),ächard(Richard),wiwi(Friedchen),agga(Martha),olla olla(Olga, her own name). Milch (milk) she calledmimi, Stuhl (chair)tuhl, Laterne (lantern),katonne, the whistle of an engine in a neighboring factory,wuh(prolonged, onomatopoetic), Paul,gouch, danke (thank you),dagnordagni, Baum (tree),maum. Another child substituteduforiande, sayinghundfor "Kind," anduluwantfor "Elephant"; thus,ein fomme hund lass wäde muchfor "ein frommes Kind lass werden mich" (let me become a pious child). Lindner's child, however, called "werden" notwädebutwegen; and "turnen" she calledtung, "blau"balau. At the end of the second year no sound in the German language presented difficulties to the child. Her pronunciation was, however, still incorrect, for the correct pronunciation of the separate sounds does not by any means carry with it the pronunciation of them in their combinations. This remark of Lindner's is directly to the point, and is also confirmed, as I find, by the first attempts of the child of four years to read a word after having learned the separate letters. The learning of the correct pronunciation is also delayed by the child's preference of his original incorrect pronunciation, to which he is accustomed, and which is encouraged by imitations of it on the part of his relatives. Lindner illustrates this by good examples. His child continued to saymimelaafter "Kamilla" was easy for him. Not till the family stopped saying it did "Kamilla" take its place. At the age of three and a half years the child still saidgebhaltenfor "behalten" andvervlorenfor "verloren," as well asgebhütefor "behüte." "Grosspapa" was called successivelyopapa,gropapa,grosspapa. Grossmama had a corresponding development. "Fleisch" (meat) was first calledjeich, thenleisch; "Kartoffeln" (potatoes)kaffom, thenkaftoffeln; "Zschopau"sopau,schodau,tschopau; "Sparbüchse" (savings-box)babichse,spabichse,spassbüchse,sparzbüchse; "Häring" (herring, also gold-fish)hänging. A sound out of the second syllable goes into the first. The first question,isn das?from "Was ist denn das?" (what is that, pray?) was noticed in the twentieth month; the interrogative wordwas?(what) in the twenty-second month. Wo? (where) and Wohin? (whither) had the same meaning (that of the Frenchoù?), and this as late as in the fourth year. The word "Ich" (I) made its appearance in the thirtieth month. As to verbs, it is to be mentioned that, with the child at two years of age, before the use of the tenses there came the special word denoting activity in general: thus he said, when looking at a head of Christ by Guido Reni,thut beten, instead of "betet" ("does pray," instead of "prays"). The verb "sein" (be) was very much distorted:Warum warst du nicht fleissig gebist?(gebist for gewesen) (why have you not been industrious?). (Cf., pp. 172, 177.) He inflectedbin,binst(for bist),bint(ist),binn(sind),bint(sind and seid),binn(sind). Further,wir isn(wir sind, we are), andnun sei ich ruhig(sei for bin) (now I am quiet), andich habe nicht ruhig geseit(habefor "bin" andgeseitfor "gewesen") (I have not been quiet), are worthy of note, because they show how strong an influence in the formation of words during the transition period is exerted by the forms most frequently heard—here the imperative. The child used first of all the imperative; last the subjunctive. The superlative and comparative were not used by this child until the fourth year.
The observations of Lindner (edited anew in the periodical "Kosmos" for 1882) are among the best we have.
In the case of four brothers and sisters, whose mother, Frau Dr. Friedemann, of Berlin, has most kindly placed at my disposal trustworthy observations concerning them, the first articulate sounds heard wereärä,hägä,äche, and a deep guttural, rattling or snarling sound (Schnarren); but the last was heard from only one of the children.
The above syllables contain three consonants (r,h,ch) that are declared by many, wrongly, to be very late in their appearance. These children in their first attempts at speaking often left out the first consonant of a word pronounced for them, or else substituted for it the one last heard, as if their memory were not equal to the retaining of the sounds heard first: e. g., in the fifteenth month they would saytĕ,tforHut(hat),LaleforRosalie; in the twenty-fourth,kankefordanke(thank you),keckeforDecke(covering),kuckerforZucker(sugar),huch,hucheforSchuh,Schuhe(shoe, shoes), fifteenth month. In the last two cases comes in, to explain the omission, also the mechanical difficulty of theZandSch. The oldest of these children, a girl, when a year old, used to say, when she refused anything,ateta, with a shake of the head. She knew her own image in the glass, and pointed at it, sayingtäte(forKäte). In the following table the Roman figures stand for the month; F1, F2, F3, F4, for the four children in the order of their ages. No further explanation will be needed:
VIII.papadistinctly (F1);dada,da,deda, first syllables (F4);dertaforBertha(F1).
X.dada, name for all possible objects (F2);papa(F3);ada,mama,detta(F4).
XII.puppe(doll) correctly;täteforKäte(F1);ida,papa,tataforTante(aunt);täte(F4).
XIII.mama,dettaforBertha;wauwau(F2);lala(F4).
XIV.baforbaden(bathe) (F2).
XV.hiaforIda;ateforartig(well-behaved);dafordanke;bappenforessen(eat);piep;ja,nein(yes, no) correctly (F1).
XVI.ei(egg) correctly;feischforFleisch(meat);wafferforWasser(water);wuffeforSuppe(F1);tatteforTante;tittak;Hut(F3).
XIX.atforKatze(cat);duhforKuh(cow);wānforSchwan(swan);nineforKaninchen(rabbit);bettaforBlätter(leaves);buttaforButterblume(buttercup);fiedemannforFriedemann;tätiforKäti(F1);gadforgerade(straight);kummforkrumm(crooked) (F3).
XX.fidatforZwieback(biscuit);tierdattenforThiergarten(zoölogical garden);wadenforwagen(carriage);nähnadenforNähnadel(needle);wewetteforserviette(napkin);teidfor Kleid (dress);weifefor Seife (soap);fammforSchwamm(sponge);tonnatforKonrad;potneforPortemonnaie;haufforherauf(up here);huntaforherunter(down here);hiba papaforlieber(dear)papa(F1);tüforThür(door);bauforbauen(build);tetaforKäte;mannaforAmanda; taforguten Tag(good-day);kuforKugel(ball) (F2);appudichforApfelmuss(apple-sauce);michforMilch(milk);ule pommforUlrich komm(Ulrich come);kuforKuchen(cake);lilteforMathilde(F3).
XXI.teineforSteine(stones);bimeleinforBlümelein(little flowers);mamaseforMamachen(little mama);tetternforklettern(climb);Papa weint nis(Papa doesn't cry), first sentence (F1);Mamase, Täte artig—Tuss(meansMamachen, Käte ist wieder artig, gib ihr einen Kuss) (Mamma, darling, Katy is good again, give her a kiss) (F1);Amanda's Hut,Mamases Hirm(for Schirm) (Amanda's hat, mamma's umbrella), first use of the genitive case (F1);Mein Buch(my book);dein Ball(thy ball) (F1);das?forwas ist das?(what is that?) in the tone of interrogation (F1)didaforIda;lalaforRosalie;fadiforFahne(flag);büdaforBrüderchen(little brother);hu-eforSchuhe(shoes);mai maich, formeine Milch(my milk) (F2).
XXII.kuschforKuss(kiss);schgenerally used instead ofsformonths (F3).
XXIII.kokaforCacao;battforBett(bed);emmuforHellmuth(light-heartedness);nanna mommom(Bon-bon);papa,appelforPapa,bitte einen Apfel(Papa, please, an apple) (F2);petscherforSchwester(sister);tillforstill;bilsforMilch;hiba vataforlieber Vater(dear father) (F3).
XXIV.pija eineforeine Fliege(a fly);pipikforMusik. Sentences begin to be formed (F3).
XXV.paterforVater(father);appelsineforApfelsine(orange) (F2).
All these observations confirm my results in regard to articulation, viz., that in very many cases the more difficult sounds, i. e., those that require a more complicated muscular action, are either omitted or have their places supplied by others; but this rule does not by any means hold good universally: e. g., the sound preferred by F3,sch, is more difficult thans, and my child very often failed to produce it as late as the first half of the fourth year.
In the twenty-second month, in the case of the intelligent little girl F1, numbering began suddenly. She took small stones from a table in the garden, one after another, and counted them distinctly up to the ninth. The persons present could not explain this surprising performance (for the child had not learned to count) until it was discovered that on the previous day some one had counted the stairs for the child in going up. My child did not begin to count till the twenty-ninth month, and, indeed, although he knew the numbers (their names, not their meaning), he counted only by adding one to one (cf. above, p. 172). Sigismund's boy, long before he formed sentences, on seeing two horsemen, one following the other at a short interval, said,eite(for Reiter)!noch eins!This proves the activity of the faculty of numbering.
The boy F3, at the age of two and two thirds years, still saidschankforSchrankandnopfforKnopf, and, on being told to saySch-r-ankplainly, he saidrrr-schank. This child from the thirty-first month on made much use of the interrogative words.Warum?weshalb?he asked at every opportunity; very often, too,was?wer?wo?(Why? wherefore? what? who? where?); sometimeswas?four or five times when he had been spoken to. When the meaning of what had been said was made plain, then the child stopped asking questions.
The little girl F4, in her thirteenth month, always says, when she sees a clock,didda(for "tick-tack," which has been said to her), and imitates with her finger the movement of the pendulum. It was noticed of this child that, when not yet five months old, she would accompany a song, sung for her by her mother, with a continuous, drawlingäh-äh-äh; but, as soon as the mother stopped, the child became silent also. The experiment was one day (the one hundred and forty-fifth of the child's life) repeated nine times, with the same result.
I have myself repeatedly observed that babes in the fourth month respond to words spoken in a forcible, pleasant manner with sounds indeterminate often, withö-ĕand other vowels. There is no imitation in this, but a reaction that is possible only through participation of the cerebrum, as in the case of the joyous sounds at music at an earlier period.
The date at which the words heard from members of the family are for the first time clearly imitated, and the time when the words of the mother-tongue are first used independently, depends, undoubtedly, with children in sound condition, chiefly upon the extent to which people occupy themselves with the children. According to Heinr. Feldmann (De statu normali functionum corporis humani.Inaugural dissertation, Bonn, 1833, p. 3), thirty-three children spoke for the first time (prima verba fecerunt) as follows:
Of these there could walk alone
According to this, it is generally the case (the author presumably observed Rhenish children) that the first independent step is taken in walking several months earlier than the first word is spoken. But the statement of Heyfelder is not correct, that the average time at which sound children learn to walk ("laufen lernen") comes almost exactly at the completion of the twelfth month. The greater part of them are said by him to begin to walk a few days before or after the 365th day. R. Demme observed that the greater part began to walk between the twelfth and eighteenth months, and my inquiries yield a similar result. Sigismund's boy could run before he imitated words and gestures, and he did not yet form a sentence when he had more than sixty words at his command. Of two sisters, the elder could not creep in her thirteenth month, could walk alone for the first time in the fifteenth month, step over a threshold alone in the eighteenth, jump down alone from a threshold in the nineteenth, run nimbly in the twentieth; the younger, on the other hand, could creep alone cleverly at the beginning of the tenth month, even over thresholds, could take the first unsteady steps alone in the thirteenth, and stride securely over the threshold alone in the fifteenth. In spite of this considerable start the younger child was not, by a great deal, so far advancedin articulation, in repeating words after others, and in the use of words, in her fifteenth month, as the elder was in her fifteenth. The latter spoke before she walked, the former ran before she spoke (Frau von Strümpell). My child could imitate gestures (beckoning, clinching the fist, nodding the head) and single syllables (heiss), before he could walk, and did not learn to speak till after that; whereas the child observed by Wyma could stand firmly at nine months, and walk soon after, and he spoke at the same age. Inasmuch as in such statistical materials the important thing is to know what is meant by "speaking for the first time," whether it be sayingmama, or imitating, or using correctly a word of the language that is to be spoken later, or forming a sentence of more than one word—and yet on these points data are lacking—we can not regard the laborious inquiries and collections as of much value. Children in sound condition walk for the most part before they speak, and understand what is said long before they walk. A healthy boy, born on the 13th of July, 1873, ran alone for the first time on the 1st of November, 1874, and formed his first sentence,hia muta ji("Marie! die Mutter ist ausgegangen,"ji= adieu) (Mary, mother has gone out), on the 21st of November, 1875, thus a full year later (Schulte).
More important, psychogenetically, are observations concerning the forming of new words with a definite meaning before learning to speak—words not to be considered as mutilations, imperfectly imitated or onomatopoetic forms (these, too, would be imitations), or as original primitive interjections. In spite of observations and inquiries directed especially to this point, I have not been able to make sure that any inventions of that sort are made before there has taken place, through the medium of the child's relatives, the first association of ideas witharticulate sounds and syllables. There is no reason for supposing them to be made by children. According to the foregoing data, they are not thus made. All the instances of word-inventions of a little boy, communicated by Prof. S. S. Haldemann, of the University at Philadelphia, in his "Note on the Invention of Words" ("Proceedings of the American Philological Association," July 14, 1880) are, like those noted by Taine, by Holden (see below), by myself, and others, onomatopoetic (imitative, pp. 160, 91). He called a cowm, a belltin-tin(Holden's boy called a church-bellling-dong-mang[communicated in correspondence]), a locomotivetshu, tshu,the noise made by throwing objects into the waterboom, and he extended this word to mean throw, strike, fall, spill, without reference to the sound. But the point of departure here, also, was the sound. In consideration of the fact that a sound formed in imitation of it, that is, a repetition of the tympanic vibrations by means of the vibrations of the vocal cords, is employed as awordfor a phenomenon associated with the sound—that this is done by means of the faculty of generalization belonging to children that are intelligent but as yet without speech—it is perfectly allowable, notwithstanding the scruples and objections of even a Max Müller, to look for the origin of language in the imitation of sounds and the repetition of our own inborn vocal sounds, and so in an imitation. For the power of forming concepts must have manifested itself in the primitive man, as is actually the case in the infant, by movements of many sorts before articulate language existed. The question is, not whether the roots of language originated onomatopoetically or interjectionally, but simply whether they originated through imitation or not. For interjections, all of them, could in no way come to be joined together so as to be means of mutual understanding, i. e., words, unless one person imitated those of another. Now if the alalic child be tested as to whether he forms new words in any other way than by imitation and transformation of what he imitates, i. e., whether he forms them solely of his own ability, be it by the combination of impulsive sounds of his own or of sounds accidentally arising in loud expiration, we find no sure case of it. Sound combinations, syllables—and those not in the least imitated—there are in abundance, but that even a single one is, without the intervention of the persons about the child, constantly associated with one and the same idea (before other ideas have received their verbal designation—likewise by means of the members of the family—and have been made intelligible to the child), can not be shown to be probable. My observations concerning the wordatta(p. 122et al.) would tend in that direction, were it not that theatta, uttered in the beginning without meaning, had first got the meaning of "away," through the fact thatattawas once said by somebody at going away.
So long as proof is wanting, we can not believe that each individual child discovers anew the fundamental fact of the expression of ideas by movements of the tongue; but we have to admit that he has inherited the faculty for such expression, and simply manifests it when he finds occasion for imitations.
The first person that has attempted to fix thenumberof all the words used by the child, independently, before the beginning of the third year of life (and these only), is an astronomer, E. S. Holden, director of the Observatory of the University at Madison, Wisconsin. His results in the case of three children have been recently published (in the "Transactions of the American Philological Association," 1887, pp. 58-68).
Holden found, by help of Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary," his own vocabulary to consist of 33,456 words, with a probable error of one per cent. Allowing a probable error of two per cent, his vocabulary would be comprised between the limits of 34,125 words and 32,787 words. A vocabulary of 25,000 words and over is, according to the researches of himself and his friends, by no means an unusual one for grown persons of average intelligence and education.
Holden now determined in the most careful manner the words actually used by two children during the twenty-fourth month of their lives. A friend in England ascertained the same for a third child. All doubtful words were rigidly excluded. For example, words from nursery rhymes were excluded, unless they were independently and separately used in the same way with words of daily and common use. In the first two cases the words so excluded are above 500 in number. Again, the names of objects represented in pictures were not included unless they were often spontaneously used by the children. The lists of words are presented in the order of their initial letters, because the ease or difficulty of pronouncing a word, the author is convinced, largely determines its early or late adoption. In this I can not fully agree with him, on the ground of my own experience (particularly since I have myself been teaching my child English, in his fourth year; he learns the language easily). It is not correct that the pronunciation rather than the meaning makes the learning of a word difficult. Thus, in all three of Holden's cases, the words that have the least easy initial (s) predominate; the child, however, avoided them and substituted easy ones. Holden makes no mention of this; and in his list of all the words used he puts together, strangely, under one and the same letter, without regard to theirsound-(phonic) value, vocables that begin with entirely different sounds. Thus, e. g., undercare foundcorner(k),chair(tsch),cellar(s); underk, actuallyknee(n) andkeep(k), and, unders, words that begin with the sames-sound as incellar, e. g.,soap, and also words beginning with thesch-sound,sugar, and withst,sw,sm, and many others. As the words of the three children are grouped, not according to thesoundswith which they begin, but according to their initialletters, into twenty-six classes, the author's conclusions can not be admitted. The words must first all be arranged according to their initialsounds. When this task is accomplished, which bringsnoandknow, e. g., into one class,wrapandraginto a second—whereas they were put in four different classes—then we find by no means the same order of succession that Holden gives. The author wrote to me, however, in 1882, that his oldest childunderstoodat least 1,000 words more than those enumerated here, i. e., than those published by him, and that with both children facility of pronunciation had more influence in regard to the use of words than did the ease with which the words could be understood; this, however, does not plainly follow from the printed statements before me, as he admits. When the first-born child was captivated by a new word, she was accustomed to practice it by herself, alone, and then to come and employ it with a certain pride. The second child did so, too, only in a less striking manner. The boy, on the contrary, who was four years old in December, 1881, and who had no ear for music and less pride than his sisters, did not do as they did.
Further, the statements of the number of all the nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs used by a child of two years are of interest, although they present several errors: e. g.,suppermakes its appearance twice in the case of the samechild unders, andenoughfigures as an adjective. For the three girls, in their twenty-fourth month, the results were:
A fourth child, brother of the first and second, made use (according to the lists kindly communicated to me by the author), in his twenty-fourth month, of 227 nouns—some proper names among them—105 verbs, 22 adjectives, 10 adverbs, and 33 words of the remaining classes (all these figures being taken from the notes of the child's mother).
From these four vocabularies of the twenty-fourth month it plainly results that the stock of words and the kinds of words depend primarily on the words most used in the neighborhood of the child, and the objects most frequently perceived; they can not, therefore, be alike in different children. The daughters of the astronomer, before their third year, name correctly a portrait of Galileo, and one of Struve. A local "tone," or peculiarity of this sort, attaches to every individual child, a general one to the children of a race. I may add that the third child (in England) seems to have been less accurately observed than the others (in Madison, Wisconsin). Great patience and attention are required to observe and note down every word used by a child in a month.
Without mentioning the name of Holden, but referring to his investigations, which, in spite of the defects mentioned, are of the very highest merit, M. W. Humphreys, Professor of Greek in Vanderbilt University, Nashville, has published a similar treatise, based on observations of his own ("A Contribution to Infantile Linguistic," in the "Transactions of the American Philological Association," 1880, xi, pp. 6-17). He collected, with the help of a dictionary, all the words that a little girl of just two years "had full command of," whether correctly pronounced or not, and whether they appeared exactly in the twenty-fourth month or earlier. He simply required to be convinced that every one of the words was understood and had been spontaneously used, and could still be used. He did not include proper names, or words (amounting to hundreds) from nursery-rhymes, or numerals, or names of the days of the week, because he was not sure that the child had a definite idea associated with them. The vocabulary thus numbered 1,121 words: 592 nouns, 283 verbs, 114 adjectives, 56 adverbs, 35 pronouns, 28 prepositions, 5 conjunctions, and 8 interjections. In this table irregular verb-and noun-forms are not counted as separate words, except in the case of defective verbs, asam,was,been. The author presents the 1,121 words according to their classification as parts of speech, and according to initialletters, not according to initialsounds, although he himself declares this an erroneous proceeding, as I did in discussing Holden's paper. The only reason for it was convenience.
In the adoption of a word by the child, difficulty of utterance had some influence in thefirstyear; when the little girl was two years old, this had ceased to have any effect whatever. She had by that time adopted certain substitutes for letters that she could not pronounce, and words containing these letters were employed by her asfreely as if the substitutes had been the correct sounds. In regard to the meaning, and the frequency of use dependent upon it, it is to be observed that the simplest ideas are most frequently expressed. When two words are synonymous, one of them will be used exclusively by a child, because of the rarer employment of the other by persons speaking in the child's presence. Here, too, the local "tone" that has been mentioned made itself felt; thus, the little girl used the word "crinoid" every day, to designate sections of fossil crinoid stems which abounded in neighboring gravel walks.
As to parts of speech, nouns were most readily seized; then, in order, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns. Prepositions and conjunctions the child began to employ early, but acquired them slowly. Natural interjections—wah, for instance—she used to some extent from the beginning; conventional ones came rather late.
The following observations by Humphreys are very remarkable, and are, in part, up to this time unique:
When about four months old the child began a curious and amusing mimicry of conversation, in which she so closely imitated the ordinary cadences that persons in an adjacent room would mistake it for actual conversation. The articulation, however, was indistinct, and the vowel-sounds obscure, and no attempt at separate words, whether real or imaginary, was made until she was six months old,when she articulated most syllables distinctly, without any apparent effort.
When she was eight months old it was discovered that she knew by name every person in the house, as well as most of the objects in her room, and the parts of the body, especially of the face. She also understood simple sentences, such as, "Where is the fire?" "Where is the baby in the glass?" to which she would reply by pointing. Inthe following months she named many things correctly, thus using words as words in the proper sense. The pronunciation of some final consonants was indistinct, but all initial consonants were distinctly pronounced, exceptth,t,d,n,l. These the child learned in the eleventh month. At this period she could imitate with accuracy any sound given her, and had a special preference forng(ngang,ngeng), beginning a mimicry of language again, this time using real or imaginary words, without reference to signification. But an obscurity of vowel-sounds had begun again. After the first year her facility of utterance seemed to have been lost, so that she watched the mouths of others closely when they were talking, and labored painfully after the sounds. Finally, she dropped her mimicry of language, and, at first very slowly, acquired words with the ordinary infant pronunciation, showing a preference for labials (p,b,m) and linguals (t,d,n, notl). Presently she substituted easy sounds for difficult ones. In the period from eighteen months to two years of age, the following defects of articulation appeared regularly:vwas pronounced likeb,th(this) liked,th(thin) liket,zliked,sliket,rlikew,jliked,chliket,shliket; further:
and in general correctly,m,b,p,n,d,t,h,ng,w. On the other hand, the initial soundsbl,br,li,pr,fl,fr,dr,tr,thr,sp,st, becameb,b,p,p,w,w,d,t,t,p,t; and the initial soundssk,sw,sm,sn,sl,gl,gr,kw,kl,kr,hw, becamet,w,m,n,t(fors),d,w,w,t,w,hw(hweak). The letterywas not pronounced at all, at first.
From this table, as Humphreys rightly observes, maybe drawn the following conclusions in regard to the initial sounds of words:
When a letter which could be pronounced correctly preceded another, the first was retained, but, if both were represented by substitutes, the second was retained. If, however, the second was one which the child made silent, then she pronounced the first. Thus,tr=t,kr=w(forr),kl=t(fork,lbeing one of her silent letters). With these results should be compared those presented in regard to German children, in the paper of Fritz Schultze (p. 239 above) (which likewise are not of universal application).
The accent was for the most part placed on the last syllable. Only one case of the invention of a new word could be established. When the child was about eighteen months old, a fly flew all about her plate when she was eating, and she exclaimed, "The old fly went wiggely-waggely." But at this time the child had already learned to speak; she knew, therefore, that perceptions are expressed by words. Notwithstanding, the original invention remains remarkable, unless there may be found in it a reminiscence of some expression out of nursery-talk (cf., p. 238). Until the eighteenth month, "no" signified both "yes" and "no."
At the end of two years subordinate propositions were correctly employed. This was the case also with a German girl in Jena, who, for instance, said, "The ball which Puck has" (P. Fürbringer). In the case of my boy such sentences did not make their appearance till much later.
I had hoped to find trustworthy observations in several other works besides those mentioned. Their titles led one to expect statements concerning the acquirement of speech by little children; thus, "Das Kind, Tagebuch eines Vaters" ("The Child, A Father's Diary"), by H. Semmig (second edition, Leipsic, 1876), and the book of B. Perez, already named (p. 239). But inasmuch as for the former of these writers the first cry of the newly-born is a "triumphal song of everlasting life," and for the second author "the glance" is associated with "the magnetic effluvia of the will," I must leave both of these works out of consideration. The second contains many statements concerning the doings and sayings of little children in France; but these can not easily be turned to account.
The same author has issued a new edition, in abridged form, of the "Memoirs," written, according to him, by Dietrich Tiedemann, of a son of Tiedemann two years of age (the biologist, Friedrich Tiedemann, born in 1781). (Thierri Tiedemann et la science de l'enfant. Mes deux chats. Fragment de psychologie comparée par Bernard Perez.Paris, 1881, pp. 7-38; Tiedemann, 39-78. "The First Six Weeks of Two Cats.") But it is merely on account of its historical interest that the book is mentioned here, as the scanty (and by no means objective) notes of the diary were made a hundred years ago. The treatises of Pollock and Egger, mentioned in the periodical "Mind" (London, July, 1881, No. 23), I am not acquainted with, and the same is true of the work of Schwarz (mentioned above, p. 224).
Very good general statements concerning the child's acquisition of speech are to be found in Degerando ("L'éducation des sourds-muets de naissance," 1 vol., Paris, 1827, pp. 32-57). He rightly maintains that the child learns to speak through his own observation, without attention from other persons, far more than through systematic instruction; the looks and gestures of the members of the family when talking with one another are especially observed by the child, who avails himself of them in divining the meaning of the words he hears. Thisdivining, or guessing, plays in fact a chief part in the learning of speech, as I have several times remarked.