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Test Bank for We the People, 10th Essentials
Edition, Benjamin Ginsberg, Theodore J. Lowi,
Margaret Weir, Caroline J. Tolbert Robert J. Spitzer
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Content instructors trust and features that show students that politics is
relevant―in a low-priced, brief text.
We the People, Tenth Essentials Edition, is ideal for showing students that politics
is relevant to their lives and that their participation in politics matters. The book
engages students with contemporary topics, including digital politics and
polarization in government, and presents information on these topics both in the
text and in new figures designed to resemble those that students see in online
media. New features and resources also teach students to be more savvy consumers
of real-world political information. Both the book and free Coursepack are
organized around specific chapter learning goals to ensure that students learn the
nuts and bolts of American government and to help instructors assess student
learning of key concepts.
About the Author
Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair
of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
He is the author or coauthor of 25 books, including Presidential Power: Unchecked
and Unbalanced; Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and
Privatized Its Public; Politics by Other Means; The Consequences of Consent; The
Worth of War; and The Captive Public. Ginsberg received his PhD from the
University of Chicago in 1973. Before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1992,
Ginsberg was Professor of Government at Cornell. His most recent books are The
Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It
Matters; What the Government Thinks of the People; and Analytics, Policy and
Governance.

Theodore J. Lowi has been John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at

Cornell University since 1972. He was elected President of the American Political
Science Association in 1990 and was cited as the political scientist who made the
most significant contribution to the field during the decade of the 1970s. Among
his numerous books are The End of Liberalism and The Pursuit of Justice, on
which he collaborated with Robert F. Kennedy.

Margaret Weir is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of

California, Berkeley. She has written widely on social policy in Europe and the
United States. She is the author of Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of
Employment Policy in the United States and coauthor (with Ira Katznelson) of
Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal. Weir has
also edited (with Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol) The Politics of Social
Policy in the United States.

Caroline Tolbert is Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, where

she regularly teaches the introductory American government course and was
awarded the Collegiate Scholar Award for excellence in teaching and research. Her
research explores political behavior, elections, American state politics, and the
Internet and politics. Tolbert is coauthor of Digital Citizenship: The Internet
Society and Participation; Why Iowa? How Caucuses and Sequential Elections
Improve the Presidential Nominating Process; and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the
Digital Divide. Digital Citizenship was ranked one of 20 best-selling titles in the
social sciences by the American Library Association in 2007. Her latest coauthored
scholarly book is Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity.
She is President of the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political
Science Association.

Robert J. Spitzer is Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at The

State University of New York at Cortland. He is the author of 15 books, focusing in
particular on the presidency, gun policy, and the Constitution. Spitzer's books
include The Presidential Veto; President and Congress; The Presidency and the
Constitution (with Michael Genovese); The Politics of Gun Control; The Right to
Bear Arms; and Saving the Constitution from Lawyers. His most recent book is
Guns Across America. He is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and
many newspapers.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
such origination of names (other than those clearly onomatopoetic)
is noteworthy.
Lastly a reference may be made to the fact that children have
shown themselves capable of inventing the rudiments of a simple
kind of language. Professor Horatio Hale of America has made a
special study of these spontaneous child-languages. One case is that
of twin American boys who when the talking age came employed not
the English sounds that they heard others speak but a language of
their own. Another, and in some ways more remarkable case, is that
of a little girl who at the age of two was backward in speaking, only
using the names ‘papa’ and ‘mamma,’ and who, nevertheless, at that
age, and in the first instance without any stimulus or aid from a
companion, proceeded to invent a vocabulary and even simple
sentence-forms of her own, which she subsequently prevailed on an
elder brother to use with her. The vocables struck out, though
suggesting some slight aural acquaintance with French—which,
however, was never spoken in her home—are apparently quite
arbitrary and not susceptible of explanation by imitation.[73]
I think the facts here brought together testify to the originality of
the child in the field of linguistics. It may be said that in none of
these cases is the effect of education wholly absent. A child, as we
all know, is taught the names of objects and actions long before he
can articulate. Thus Darwin’s boy knew the name of his nurse five
months before he invented the vocable ‘mum’. It is obvious indeed
that wherever children are subjected to normal training their sign-
making impulse is stimulated by the example of others. At the same
time the facts here given show that the working of this impulse may,
in a certain number of children at least, strike out original lines of its
own independently of the direct action of example and education.
What is wanted now is to experiment carefully with an intelligent
child, encouraging him to make signs by patient attention and ready
understanding, but at the same time carefully abstaining from giving
the lead or even taking up and adopting the first utterances so as to
bring in the influence of imitation. I think there is little doubt that a
child so situated might develop the rudiments of a vocal language.
The experiment would be difficult to carry out, as it would mean the
depriving of the child for a time of the advantages of education.[74]
 Beginnings of Linguistic Imitation.
The learning of the mother-tongue is one of the most instructive
and, one may add, the most entertaining chapters in the history of
the child’s education. The brave efforts to understand and follow, the
characteristic and quaint errors that often result, the frequent
outbursts of originality in bold attempts to enrich our vocabulary and
our linguistic forms—all this will repay the most serious study, while
it will provide ample amusement.
As pointed out above the learning of the mother-tongue is
essentially a kind of imitation. The process is roughly as follows. The
child hears a particular sound used by another, and gradually
associates it with the object, the occurrence, the situation, along
with which it again and again presents itself. When this stage is
reached he can understand the word-sound as used by another
though he cannot as yet use it. Later, by a considerable interval, he
learns to connect the particular sound with the appropriate vocal
action required for its production. As soon as this connexion is
formed his sign-making impulse imitatively appropriates it by
repeating it in circumstances similar to those in which he has heard
others employ it.
The imitation of others’ articulate sounds begins, as already
remarked, very early and long before the sign-making impulse
appropriates them as true words. The impulse to imitate others’
movements seems first to come into play about the end of the
fourth month; and traces of imitative movements of the mouth in
articulation are said to have been observed in certain cases about
this time. But it is only in the second half-year that the imitation of
sounds becomes clearly marked. At first this imitation is rather of
tone, rise and fall of voice, and apportioning of stress or accent than
of articulate quality; but gradually the imitation takes on a more
definite and complete character.[75]
 Towards the end of the year, in favourable cases, true linguistic
imitation commences. That is to say, word-sounds gathered from
others are used as such. Thus, a boy of ten months would correctly
name his mother, ‘Mamma,’ his aunt, ‘Addy’ (Aunty), and a person
called Maggie, ‘Azzie’.[76] As already suggested, this imitative
reproduction of others’ words synchronises, roughly at least, with
the first onomatopoetic imitation of natural sounds.
 Transformations of our Words.
As is well known the first tentatives in the use of the common
speech-forms are very rough. The child in reproducing transforms,
and these transformations are often curious and sufficiently puzzling.
The most obvious thing about these first infantile renderings of
the adult’s language is that they are a simplification. This applies to
all words alike. Monosyllables if involving a complex mass of sound
are usually reduced, as when ‘dance’ is shortened to ‘da’. This clearly
illustrates the difficulty of certain sound-combinations, a point to be
touched on presently. More striking is the habitual reduction of
dissyllables and polysyllables. Here we note that the child
concentrates his effort on the reproduction of a part only of the
syllabic series, which part he may of course give but very
imperfectly. The shortening tends to go to the length of reducing to
a monosyllable. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bik,’ ‘Constance’ ‘tun,’
‘candle’ ‘ka,’ ‘bread and butter’ ‘bup’ or ‘bŭ’. Polysyllables, though
occasionally cut down to monosyllables, as when ‘hippopotamus’
became ‘pots,’ are more frequently reduced to dissyllables, as when
‘periwinkle’ was shortened to ‘pinkle’. Handkerchief is a trying word
for the English child, and for obvious reasons has to be learnt. It was
reduced by the eldest child of a family to ‘hankish,’ by the two next
to ‘hamfisch’ and by the last two to ‘hanky’. The little girl M. also
reduced the last two syllables to ‘fish,’ making the sound ‘hanfish’.
There seems to be no simple law governing these reductions of
verbal masses. The accentuated syllable, by exciting most attention,
is commonly the one reproduced, as when ‘nasturtium’ became
‘turtium’.[77] In the case of long words the position of a syllable at the
beginning or at the end of the word seems to give an advantage in
this competition of sounds, the former by impressing the sound as
the first heard (compare the way in which we note and remember
the initial sound of a name),[78] the latter by impressing it as the last
heard, and therefore best retained. The unequal articulatory facility
of the several sound-combinations making up the word may also
have an influence on this unconscious selection. I think it not
unlikely, too, that germs of a kind of æsthetic preference for certain
sounds as new, striking or fine, may co-operate here.[79]
Such simplification of words is from the first opposed, and tends in
time to be counteracted, by the growth of a feeling for their general
form as determined by the number of syllables, as well as the
distribution of stress and any accompanying alterations of tone or
pitch. The infant’s first imitations of the sounds ‘good-bye,’ ‘all gone,’
and so forth, by couples which preserve hardly anything of the
articulatory character, though they indicate the syllabic form, position
of stress, and rising and falling inflection, illustrate the early
development of this feeling. Hence we find in general an attempt to
reproduce the number of syllables, and also to give the proper
distribution of stress. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bítchic,’ ‘cellar’ ‘sítoo,’
‘umbrella’ ‘nobélla,’ ‘elephant’ ‘étteno,’ or (by a German child)
‘ewebón,’ ‘kangaroo’ ‘kógglegoo,’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘ippenpótany,’ and
so forth.[80]
As suggested above there goes from the first with the cutting
down of the syllabic series a considerable alteration of the single
constituent sounds. The vowel sounds are rarely omitted; yet they
may be greatly modified, and these modifications occur regularly
enough to suggest that the child finds certain nuances of vowel
sounds comparatively hard to reproduce. Thus the short ă in hat,
and the long ī (ai), seem to be acquired only after considerable
practice.[81] But it is among the consonants that most trouble arises.
Many of these, as the sibilants or ‘hisses,’ s, sh, the various l and r
sounds, the dentals, the “point-teeth-open” th and dh (in ‘thin,’
‘this’), the back or guttural ‘stops,’ i.e., k and hard g, and others as j
or soft g (as in ‘James,’ ‘gem’), appear, often at least, to cause
difficulty at the beginning of the speech period. With these must be
reckoned such combinations as st, str.
In many cases the difficult sounds are merely dropped. Thus ‘poor’
may become ‘poo,’ ‘look’ ‘ook,’ ‘Schulter’ (German) ‘Ulter’. In the
case of awkward combinations this dropping is apt to be confined to
the difficult sound, provided, that is to say, the other is manageable
alone. Thus ‘dance’ becomes ‘dan,’ ‘trocken’ (German) becomes
‘tokko’. More particularly s and sh are apt to be omitted before other
consonants. Thus ‘stair’ becomes ‘tair,’ ‘sneeze’ ‘neeze,’ ‘schneiden’
(German) ‘neida,’ and so forth.
Along with such lame omissions we have the more vigorous
procedure of substitutions. In certain cases there seems little if any
kinship between the sounds or the articulatory actions by which they
are produced. At the early stage more particularly almost any
manageable sound seems to do duty as substitute. The early-
acquired labials, including the labio-dental f come in as serviceable
‘hacks’ at this stage. What we call lisping is indeed exemplified in
this class of infantile substitutions. Children have been observed to
say ‘fank’ for ‘thank’ and ‘mouf’ for ‘mouth,’ ‘feepy’ for ‘sleepy,’
‘poofie’ for ‘pussy,’ ‘wiver’ for ‘river,’ ‘Bampe’ for ‘Lampe’ (German).
The dentals, too, d and t, are turned to all kinds of vicarious service.
Thus we find ‘ribbon’ rendered by ‘dib,’ ‘gum’ by ‘dam,’ ‘Greete’
(German) by ‘Deete,’ ‘Gummi’ (German) by ‘Dummi,’ ‘cut’ by ‘tut,’
and ‘klopfen’ (German) by ‘topfen’. Similarly ‘gee-gee’ (horse), which
oddly enough was first rendered by the child M. as ‘dee-gee,’ is
altered to ‘dee-dee’. I find too that new sounds are apt to be put to
this miscellaneous use. Thus one child after learning the aspirate (h)
at two years not only brought it out with great emphasis in its
proper place but began to use it as a substitute for other and
unmanageable sounds. Thus he would say, ‘hie down on hofa’ for ‘lie
down on sofa’. The aspirate is further used in place of sh, as when
‘shake’ was rendered by ‘hate,’ and of st, as when Preyer’s boy called
‘Stern’ ‘Hern’. In other cases we see that the little linguist is trying to
get as near as possible to the sound, and such approximations are
an interesting sign of progress. Thus in one case ‘chatterbox’ was
rendered by ‘jabberwock,’ in another case ‘dress’ by ‘desh,’ in
another (Preyer’s boy), ‘Tisch’ (German) by ‘Tiss’.[82]
Besides omissions and substitution of sounds, occasional
insertions are said to occur. According to one set of observations r
may be inserted after the broad a, as when ‘pocket’ was rendered by
‘barket’. A cockney is apt to do the same, as when he talks of having
a ‘barth’ (bath). Yet this observation requires to be verified.
 These alterations of articulate sound by the child remind one of
the changes which the languages of communities undergo. We
know, indeed, that these changes are due to imperfect imitation by
succeeding generations of learners.[83] Hence we need not be
surprised to find now and again analogies between these nursery
transformations and those of words in the development of
languages. In reproducing the sounds which he hears a child often
illustrates a law of adult phonetic change. Thus changes within the
same class of sounds, as the frequent alteration of ‘this’ into ‘dis,’
clearly correspond with those modifications recognised in Grimm’s
Law. So, too, the common substitution of a dental for a guttural has
its parallel in the changes of racial language.[84] Nobody again can
note the transformation of n into m before f in the form ‘hamfish’ for
‘handkerchief’ without thinking of the Greek change of συν into συμ
before β, and like changes. Philologists may probably find many
other parallels. One of them tells me that his little girl, on rendering
sh by the guttural h, reproduced a change in Spanish pronunciation.
M. Egger compares a child’s rendering of ‘trop’ (French) by ‘crop’
with the transformation of the Latin ‘tremere’ into ‘craindre’.
I have assumed here that children’s defective reproduction of our
verbal sounds is the result of inability to produce certain sounds and
not due to the want of a discrimination of the sounds by the ear.
This may seem strange in the light of Preyer’s statement that the
earlier impulsive babbling includes most, if not all, of the sounds
required later on for articulation. This may turn out to be an
exaggeration, yet there is no doubt, I think, that certain sounds,
including some as the initial l which are common in the earlier
babbling stage, are not produced at the beginning of the articulatory
period. As the avoidance of these occurs in all children alike it seems
reasonable to infer that they involve difficult muscular combinations
in the articulatory organ. At the same time it seems going too far to
say, as Schultze does, that the order of acquisition of sounds
corresponds with the degree of difficulty. The very variability of this
order in the case of different children shows that there is no such
simple correspondence as this.[85]
 The explanation of those early omissions and alterations is
probably a rather complex matter. To begin with, the speech-organs
of a child may lose special aptitudes by the development of other
and opposed aptitudes. A friend of mine, a physiologist, tells me that
his little boy who said ‘ma-ma’ (but not ‘da-da’) at ten months lost at
the age of nineteen months the use of m, for which he regularly
substituted b. He suggests that the nasal sound m, though easy for
a child in the sucking stage and accustomed to close the lips, may
become difficult later on through the acquisition of open sounds. It
is worth considering whether this principle does not apply to other
inabilities. This, however, is a question for the science of phonetics.
We must remember, further, that it is one thing to carry out an
articulatory movement as a child of nine months carries it out,
‘impulsively,’ through some congenitally arranged mode of exciting
the proper motor centre, another thing to carry it out volitionally,
i.e., in order to produce a desired result. This last means that the
sound-effect of the movement has been learned, that the image or
representation of it has been brought into definite connexion with a
particular impulse, viz., that of carrying out the required movement:
and this is now known to depend on the formation of some definite
neural connexion between the auditory and the motor regions of the
speech-centre. This process is clearly more complex than the first
instinctive utterance, and may be furthered or hindered by various
conditions. Thus a child’s own spontaneous babblings may not have
sufficed to impress a particular sound on the memory; in which case
his acquisition of it will be favoured or otherwise by the frequency
with which it is produced by others in his hearing. It is probable that
differences in the range and accuracy of production of sounds by
nurse and mother tell from the first. The differences observable in
the order of acquisition of sounds among children may be in part
due to this, and not merely to differences in the speech-organ. It is
probable, too, that children’s attention may be especially called to
certain sounds or sound-groups, either because of a preferential
liking for the sounds themselves, or because of a special need of
them as useful names. M.’s mother assures me that the child
seemed to dislike particular sounds as j, which she could and did
occasionally pronounce, though she was given to altering them.[86]
Another lady writes that her boy at the age of twenty-two months
surprised her by suddenly bringing out the combination ‘scissors’. He
had just begun to use scissors in cutting up paper, and so had
acquired a practical interest in this sound-mass.
We may now pass to another of the commonly recognised defects
of early articulation, viz., the transposition of sounds or metathesis.
Sometimes it is two contiguous sounds which are transposed, as
when ‘star’ is rendered by ‘tsar’ and ‘spoon’ by ‘psoon’. Here the
motive of the change is evidently to facilitate the combination. We
have a parallel to this in the use of ‘aks’ (ax) for ‘ask,’ a transposition
which was not long since common enough in the West of England.
[87]
In other transpositions sounds are shifted further from their
place. Preyer quotes a case in which there was a dislocation of vowel
sounds, viz., in the transformation of ‘bite’ (German) into ‘beti’.[88]
Here there seems to be no question of avoiding a difficult
combination. Other examples are the following: ‘hoogshur’ for
‘sugar’ (one of the first noticed at the age of two); ‘mungar’ for
‘grandmamma,’ ‘punga’ for ‘grandpapa,’ and ‘natis’ for ‘nasty’ (boy
between eighteen and twenty-four months); and ‘boofitul’ for
‘beautiful’. Here again we have an analogy to defective speech in
adults. When a man is very tired he is liable to precisely similar
inversions of order. The explanation seems to be that the right group
of sounds may present itself to the speaker’s consciousness without
any clear apprehension of their temporal order. Perhaps quasi-
æsthetic preferences play a part here too. The child M. seems to
have preferred the sequence m-n to n-m, saying ‘jaymen’ for
‘geranium’, ‘burman’ for ‘laburnum’.
Another interesting feature in this early articulation is the impulse
to double sounds, to get a kind of effect of assonance or of rhyme
by a repetition of sound or sound-group. The first and simplest form
of this is where a whole sound-mass or syllable is iterated, as in the
familiar ‘ba-ba,’ ‘gee-gee’ ‘ni-ni’ (for nice). Some children frequently
turn monosyllables into reduplications, making book ‘boom-boom’
and so forth. It is, however, in attempting dissyllables that the
reduplication is most common. Thus ‘naughty’ becomes ‘na-na,’
‘faster’ ‘fa-fa,’ ‘Julia’ ‘dum-dum,’ and so forth, where the repeated
syllable displaces the second original syllable and so serves to retain
something of the original word-form. In some cases the second and
unaccented syllable is selected for reduplication, as in the instance
quoted by Perez, ‘peau-peau’ for ‘chapeau’. Such reduplications are
sometimes aided by kinship of sound, as when the little girl M.
changed ‘purple’ into its primitive form ‘purpur’.
These early reduplications are clearly a continuation of the
repetitions observable in the earlier babbling, and grow out of the
same motive, the impulse to go on doing a thing, and the pleasure
of repetition and self-imitation. As is well known, these
reduplications have their parallel in many of the names used by
savage tribes.[89]
In addition to these palpable reduplications of sound-masses we
have repetitions of single sounds, the repeated sound being
substituted for another and foreign one. This answers to what is
called in phonetics ‘assimilations’.[90] In the majority of cases the
assimilation is ‘progressive,’ the change being carried out by a
preceding on a succeeding sound. Examples are ‘Kikie’ for ‘Kitty,’ and
‘purpur’ for ‘purple’. This last transformation, though it was made by
the little daughter of a distinguished philologist, was quite innocent
of classical influence, and was clearly motived by the childish love of
reduplication of sound. In many cases the substitution of an easy for
a difficult sound seems to be determined in part by assimilation, as
when ‘another’ was rendered by ‘annunner,’ ‘gateau’ (French) by ‘ca-
co’. The assimilation seems, too, sometimes to work “regressively,”
as when ‘thick’ becomes ‘kick,’ ‘Bonnie Dundee’ ‘Bun-dun,’ and
‘tortue’ (French) ‘tu-tu,’ in which two last reduplication is secured
approximately or completely by change of vowel.[91] There seem also
to be cases of what may be called partial assimilation, that is, a
tendency to transform a sound into one of the same class as the
first. “If (writes a mother of her boy) a word began with a labial he
generally concluded it with a labial, making ‘bird,’ for example,
‘bom’.” But these cases are not, perhaps, perfectly clear examples of
assimilation.
 Along with the tendency to reduplicate syllabic masses, we see a
disposition to use habitually certain favourite syllables as
terminations, more particularly the pet ending ‘ie’. Thus ‘sugar’
becomes ‘sugie,’ ‘picture’ ‘pickie,’ and so forth. One child was so
much in love with this syllable as to prefer it even to the common
repetition of sound in onomatopoetic imitation, naming the hen not
‘tuck-tuck’ as one might expect, but ‘tuckie’.
What strikes one in these early modifications of our verbal sounds
by the child is the care for metrical qualities and the comparative
disregard for articulatory characteristics. The number of syllabic
sounds, the distribution of stress, as well as the rise and fall of vocal
pitch, are the first things to be attended to, and these are, on the
whole, carefully rendered when the constituent sounds are changed
into other and often very unlike ones, and the order of the sounds is
reversed. Again, the comparative fidelity in rendering the vowel
sounds illustrates the prominence of the metrical or musical quality
in childish speech. The love of reduplication, of the effect of
assonance and rhyme, illustrates the same point. This may be seen
in some of the more playful sayings of the child M., as ‘Babba hiding,
Ice (Alice) spiding (spying)’.
As I have dwelt at some length on the defective articulation of
children, I should like to say that their early performances, so far
from being a discredit to them, are very much to their credit. I, at
least, have often been struck with the sudden bringing forth without
any preparatory audible trial of difficult combinations, and with a
wonderful degree of accuracy. A child can often articulate better
than he is wont to do. The little girl M., when one year six months,
being asked teasingly to say ‘mudder,’ said with a laugh ‘mother,’
quite correctly—but only on this one occasion. The precision which a
child, even in the second year, will often give to our vocables is quite
surprising, and reminds me of the admirable exactness which, as I
have observed, other strangers to our language, and more especially
perhaps Russians, introduce into their articulation, putting our own
loose treatment of our language to the blush. This precision,
acquired as it would seem without any tentative practice, points, I
suspect, to a good deal of silent rehearsal, nascent groupings of
muscular actions which are not carried far enough to produce sound.
The gradual development of the child’s articulatory powers, as
indicated partly by the precision of the sounds formed, partly by
their differentiation and multiplication, is a matter of great interest.
At the beginning, when he is able to reproduce only a small portion
of a vocable, there is of course but little differentiation. Thus it has
been remarked by more than one observer, that one and the same
sound (so far at least as our ears can judge) will represent different
lingual signs, ‘ba’ standing in the case of one child for both ‘basket’
and ‘sheep’ (‘ba lamb’), and ‘bo’ for ‘box’ and ‘bottle’. Little by little
the sound grows differentiated into a more definite and perfect form,
and it is curious to note the process of gradual evolution by which
the first rude attempt at articulate form gets improved and refined.
Thus, writes a mother, “at eighteen to twenty months ‘milk’ was
‘gink,’ at twenty-one months it was ‘ming,’ and soon after two years
it was a sound between ‘mik’ and ‘milk’.” The same child in learning
to say ‘lion’ went through the stages ‘ŭn’ (one year eight months),
‘ion’ (two years), and ‘lion’ (two years and eight months). The little
girl M., in learning the word ‘breakfast,’ advanced by the stages
‘bepper,’ ‘beffert,’ ‘beffust’. In an example given by Preyer,
‘grosspapa’ (grandpapa) began as ‘opapa,’ this passed into ‘gropapa,’
and this again into ‘grosspapa’. In another case given by Schultze
the word ‘wasser’ (pronounced ‘vasser’) went through the following
stages: (1) ‘vavaff,’ (2) ‘fafaff,’ (3) ‘vaffaff,’ (4) ‘vasse,’ and (5)
‘vasser’. In this last we have an interesting illustration of a struggle
between the imitative impulse to reproduce the exact sound and the
impulse to reduplicate or repeat the sound, this last being very
apparent in the introduction of the second v and the ff in the first
stage, and in the substitution of the f’s for v’s under the influence of
the dominant final sound in the second stage. The student of the
early stages of language growth might, one imagines, find many
suggestive parallels in these developmental changes in children’s
articulation.
The rapidity of articulatory progress might be measured by a
careful noting of the increase in the number of vocables mastered
from month to month. Although Preyer and others have given lists of
vocables used at particular ages, and parents have sent me lists, I
have met with no methodical record of the gradual extension of the
articulate field. It is obvious that any observations under this head,
save in the very early stages, can only be very rough. No observer of
a talkative child, however attentive, can make sure of all the word-
sounds used. It is to be noted, too, as we have seen above, that a
child will sometimes show that he can master a sound and will even
make a temporary use of it, without retaining it as a part of the
permanent linguistic stock.[92]
 Logical Side of Children’s Language.
It is now time to pass from the mechanical to the logical side of
this early child-language, to the meanings which the small linguist
gives to his articulate sounds and the ways in which he modifies
these meanings. The growth of a child’s speech means a concurrent
progress in the mastery of word-forms and in the acquisition of
ideas. In this each of the two factors aids the other, the advance of
ideas pushing the child to new uses of sounds, and the growing
facility in word-formation reacting powerfully on the ideas, giving
them definiteness of outline and fixity of structure. I shall not
attempt here to give a complete account of the process, but content
myself with touching on one or two of its more interesting aspects.
A child acquires the proper use or application of a word by
associating the sound heard with the object, situation or action in
connexion with which others are observed to use it. But the first
imitation of words does not show that the little mind has seized their
full and precise meaning. A clear and exact apprehension of meaning
comes but slowly, and only as the result of many hard thought-
processes, comparisons and discriminations.
In these first attempts to use our speech, the child’s mind is
innocent of grammatical distinctions. These arise out of the
particular uses of words in sentence-structure, and of this structure
the child has as yet no inkling. If, then, following a common practice,
I speak of a child of twelve or fifteen months as naming an object,
the reader must not suppose that I am ascribing to the baby-mind a
clear grasp of the function of what grammarians call nouns
(substantives). All that is implied in this way of speaking, is that the
infant’s first words are used mainly as recognition-signs. There is
from the first, I conceive, even in the gesture of pointing and saying
‘da!’ a germ of this naming process.
The progress of this rude naming or articulate recognition is very
interesting. The names first learnt are either those of individuals,
what we call proper names, as ‘mamma,’ ‘nurse,’ or those which, like
‘bath,’ ‘bow-wow,’ are at first applied to one particular object. It is
often supposed that a child uses these as true singular names,
recognising individual objects as such. But this is pretty certainly an
error. He cannot note differences well enough or grasp a sufficient
number of differential marks to know an individual as such, and he
will, as occasion arises, quite spontaneously extend his names to
other things which happen to have some interesting and notable
points in common with the first. Thus ‘bow-wow,’ though first
applied to one particular dog, is, as we know, at once extended to
other dogs, pictures of dogs, and not infrequently other things as
well. If then we speak of the child as generalising or widening the
application of his terms, we must not be taken to mean that he goes
through a process of comparing things which he perceives to be
distinct, and discovering a likeness in these, but that he merely
assimilates or recognises something like that which he has seen
before without troubling to note the differences.
This extension of names or generalising process proceeds
primarily and mainly by the feeling for the likenesses or the common
aspects of things, though as we shall see presently their connexions
of time and place afford a second and subordinate means of
extension. The transference of a name from object to object through
this apprehension of a likeness or assimilation has already been
touched upon. It moves along thoroughly childish lines, and
constitutes one of the most striking and interesting of the
manifestations of precocious originality. Yet if unconventional in its
mode of operation it is essentially thought-activity, a connecting of
like with like, and a rudimentary grouping of things in classes.
This tendency to comprehend like things or situations under a
single articulate sign is seen already in the use of the early indicative
sign ‘atta’ (all gone). It was used by Preyer’s child to mark not only
the departure of a thing but the putting out of a flame, later on, an
empty glass or other vessel. By another child it was extended to the
ending of music, the closing of a drawer and so on. Here, however,
the various applications probably answer more to a common feeling
of ending or missing than to an apprehension of a common objective
situation.
Coming to words which we call names we find that the child will
often extend a recognition-sign from one object to a second, and to
our thinking widely dissimilar object through the discovery of some
analogy. Such extension, moving rather along poetic lines than those
of our logical classifications, is apt, as we have seen, to wear a
quaint metaphorical aspect. A star, for example, looked at, I
suppose, as a small bright spot, was called by one child an eye. The
child M. called the opal globe of a lighted lamp a ‘moon’. ‘Pin’ was
extended by another child to a crumb just picked up, a fly, and a
caterpillar, and seemed to mean something little to be taken
between the fingers. The same child used the sound ‘’at’ (hat) for
anything put on the head, including a hair-brush. Another child used
the word ‘key’ for other bright metal things, as money. Romanes’
child extended the word ‘star,’ the first vocable learned after
‘Mamma’ and ‘Papa,’ to bright objects generally, candles, gas-flames,
etc. Taine speaks of a child of one year who after first applying the
word “fafer” (from “chemin de fer”) to railway engines went on to
transfer it to a steaming coffee-pot and everything that hissed or
smoked or made a noise. In these last illustrations we have plainly a
rudimentary process of classification. Any point of likeness, provided
it is of sufficient interest to strike the attention, may thus serve as a
basis of childish classification.
As with names of things so with those of actions. The crackling
noise of the fire was called by one child ‘barking,’ and the barking of
a dog was named by another ‘coughing’. We see from this that the
particular line of analogical extension followed by a child will depend
on the nature of the first impressions or experiences which serve as
his starting point.
A like originality is apt to show itself in the first crude attempt to
seize and name the relations of things. The child C. called dipping
bread in gravy ‘ba’ (bath). Another child extended the word ‘door’ to
“everything that stopped up an opening or prevented an exit,
including the cork of a bottle, and the little table that fastened him in
his high chair”.
 In these extensions we see the tendency of child-thought towards
‘concretism,’ or the use of a simple concrete idea in order to express
a more abstract idea. Children frequently express the contrast big,
little, by the pretty figurative language ‘Mamma’ and ‘baby’. Thus a
small coin was called by an American child a ‘baby dollar’. Romanes’
daughter, named Ilda, pointed out the sheep in a picture as
‘Mamma-ba’ and the lambs as ‘Ilda-ba’. It is somewhat the same
process when the child extends an idea obtained from the most
impressive experience of childish difficulty, viz., ‘too big,’ so as to
make it do duty for the abstract notion ‘too difficult’ in general.
In this extension of language by the child we may discern, along
with this play of the feeling for similarity, the working of association.
This is illustrated by the case of Darwin’s grandchild, who when just
beginning to speak used the common sign ‘quack’ for duck, then
extended this to water, then, following up this associative
transference by a double process of generalisation, made the sound
serve as the name of all birds and insects on the one hand, and all
fluid substances on the other.[93]
The transference of the name ‘quack’ from the animal to the water
is a striking example of the tendency of the young mind to view
things which are presented together as belonging one to another
and in a manner identical. Another curious instance is given by
Professor Minto, in which a child, who applied the word ‘mambro’ to
her nurse, went on to extend it by associative transference to the
nurse’s sewing machine, then by analogy applied it to a hand-organ
in the street, later on, through an association of hand-organ with
monkey, to his india-rubber monkey. Here we have a whole history
of change of word-meaning illustrating in curiously equal measure
the play of assimilation and of association, and falling within a period
of two years.[94]
There is another way in which children are said to ‘extend’ names
somewhat analogous to the processes of assimilation and associate
transference. They are very fond of using the same word for
opposed or other correlative ideas. In some cases we can see that
this is due merely to confusion or want of discrimination. When, for
example, Preyer’s boy confused ‘too little’ with ‘too much,’ and
‘yesterday’ with ‘to-morrow,’ going so far as to make a compound
‘heitgestern’ (i.e., heutegestern) to include both,[95] it is easy to see
that the child’s mind had reached merely the vague idea unsuitable
in quantity in the one case, and time not present in the other; and
that he failed to differentiate these ideas. In other cases where
correlatives are confused, as when a child extended the sign of
asking for an eatable (‘bit-ye’) to the act of offering anything to
another, or when as in C.’s case ‘spend’ was made to do duty for
‘cost,’ ‘borrow’ for ‘lend,’ and ‘learn’ for ‘teach,’ the explanation is
slightly different. A child can only acquire an idea of abstract
relations slowly and by stages. Such words as lend, teach, call up
first a pictorial idea of an action in which two persons are seen to be
concerned. But the exact nature of the relation, and the difference in
its aspect as we start from the one or the other term, are not
perceived. Thus in thinking of a purchase over the counter, a child
may be supposed to image the action but not clearly to distinguish
the part taken by the person who buys and gives out money
(‘spends’) and the part taken by the person who demands a price or
fixes the cost. Perhaps we get near this vague awareness of a
relation when we are aiding a violinist to tune his instrument. We
may know that his note and our piano note do not accord, and yet
be quite unable to determine their exact relation, and to fix the one
as higher, the other as lower.
An interesting variety of this extension of names to correlatives is
the transference of the attributes of causal agent to passive object,
and vice versâ. Thus a little girl of four called her parasol when
blown by the wind ‘a windy parasol,’ and a stone that made her hand
sore ‘a very sore stone’. A little Italian girl that had taken some nasty
medicines expressed the fact by calling herself nasty (‘bimba
cattiva’).[96]
There is much in the whole of these changes introduced by the
child into the uses or meanings of words which may remind one of
the changes which go on in the growth of languages in communities.
Thus the child’s metaphorical use of words, his setting forth of an
abstract idea by some analogous concrete image, has its
counterpart, as we know, in the early stages of human language.
Tribes which have no abstract signs employ a metaphor exactly as
the child does. Our own language preserves the traces of this early
figurative use of words; as in ‘imbecile,’ weak, which originally meant
leaning on a staff, and so forth.[97]
Again, we may trace in the development of languages the
counterpart of those processes by which children spontaneously
expand what logicians call the denotation of their names. The word
‘sun’ has only quite recently undergone this kind of extension by
being applied to other centres of systems besides our familiar sun.
The multiplicity of meanings of certain words, as ‘post,’ ‘stock’ and so
forth, points to the double process of assimilative and associative
extension which we saw illustrated in the use of the child’s word
‘mambro’.
Once more, the child’s extension of a word from an idea to its
correlative has its parallel in the adult’s use of language. As the
vulgar expression ‘I’ll larn you’ shows (cf. the Anglo-Saxon leornian),
a word may come to mean both to teach and to become taught. A
like embracing of agent and object acted upon by the same word is
seen in the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ meanings of words like the Latin
penetrabilis (‘piercing’ and ‘pierceable’), and in the ‘objective’ and
‘subjective’ meanings of ‘pleasant’ and similar words. We are
beginning, like the little girl quoted above, to speak of a ‘sore’ topic.
Lastly, the movement of thought underlying the saying of the little
Italian girl, ‘nasty baby,’ seems to be akin to that of the savage when
he supposes that he appropriates the qualities of that which he eats.
The changes here touched upon have to do with what philologists
call generalisation. As supplementary to these there is in the case of
the growth of a community-language a process of specialisation, as
when ‘physician’ from meaning a student of nature has come to
mean one who has acquired and can practically apply one branch of
nature-knowledge. In the case of the child we have an analogue of
this in the gradual limitation of names to narrower classes or to
individuals as the result of carrying out certain processes of
comparison and discrimination. Thus ‘ba-ba,’ which is used at first
for a miscellaneous crowd of woolly or hairy quadrupeds, gets
specialised as a name for a sheep, and the much-abused ‘papa’
becomes restricted to its rightful owner.
This process of differentiation and specialisation assumes an
interesting form in a characteristic feature of the language-invention
of both children and savages, viz., the formation of compound
words. These compounds are often true metaphors. Thus in the case
already quoted where an eye-lid was called an eye-curtain the child
may be said to have resorted to a metaphorical way of describing
the lid. It is much the same when M. at the age of one year nine
months invented the expression ‘bwite (bright) penny’ for silver
pieces. A slightly different example is the compound ‘foot-wing’
invented by the child C. to describe the limb of a seal. As a further
variety of this metaphoric formation I may quote the pretty name
‘tell-wind’ which a boy of four years and eight months hit upon as a
name for the weather-vane.
In these and similar cases, there is at once an analogical
transference of meaning (e.g., from curtain to lid) or process of
generalisation, and a limitation of meaning by the appended or
qualifying word ‘eye’ and so a process of specialisation.
In certain cases the analogical extension gives place to what we
should call a classification. One child for example, knowing the word
steam-ship and wanting the name sailing-ship, invented the form
‘wind-ship’. The little girl M., when one year and nine months old,
showed quite a passion for classing by help of compounds, arranging
the rooms into ‘morner-room,’ ‘dinner-room’ (she was fond of adding
‘er’ at this time) and ‘nursery-room’.
It might be supposed from a logical point of view that in these
inventions the qualifying or determining word would come more
naturally after the generic name, as in the French moulin à vent,
cygne noir. I have heard of one English child who used the form
‘mill-wind’ in preference to ‘wind-mill,’ and the order ‘dog black’ in
preference to ‘black dog’. It would be worth while to note any similar
instances.
In these inventions, again, we may detect a close resemblance
between children’s language and that of savages. In presence of a
new object a savage behaves very much as a child, he shapes a new
name out of familiar ones, a name that commonly has much of the
metaphorical character. Thus the Aztecs called a boat a ‘water-
house’; and the Vancouver islanders when they saw a screw-steamer
called it the ‘kick-kicket’.[98]
A somewhat different class of word-inventions is that in which a
child frames a new word on the analogy of known words. A common
case is the invention of new substantives from verbs after the
pattern of other substantives. The results are often quaint enough.
Sometimes it is the agent who is named by the new word, as when
the boy C. talked of the ‘Rainer,’ the fairy who makes rain, or when
another little boy dubbed a teacher the ‘lessoner’. Sometimes it is
the product of the action that is named, as when the same child C.
and the deaf-mute Laura Bridgman both invented the form ‘thinks’
for ‘thoughts’. In much the same way a boy of three called the holes
which he dug in his garden his ‘digs’. The reverse process, the
formation of a verb from a substantive, also occurs. Thus one child
invented the form ‘dag’ for striking with a dagger; and Preyer’s boy
when two years and two months old formed the verb ‘messen’ to
express cut from the substantive ‘messer’ (a knife). It was probably
a similar process when the child M. at one year ten months, after
seeing a motionless worm and being told that it was dead, asked to
see another worm ‘deading’. The same child coined the neat verb-
form ‘unparcel’. This readiness to form verbs from substantives and
vice versâ, which is abundantly illustrated in the development of
language, is without doubt connected with the primitive and natural
mode of thinking. The object is of greatest interest both to the child
and to primitive man as an agent, or as the last stage or result of an
action.
In certain of these original formations we may detect a fine feeling
for verbal analogy. Thus a French boy, after killing the ‘limaces’
(snails) which were eating the plants in the garden, dignified his
office by styling himself a ‘limarcier’; where the inventive faculty was
no doubt led by the analogy of ‘voiturier’ formed from ‘voiture’.[99]
In other verbal formations it is difficult to determine the model
which is followed. Signorina Lombroso gives a good example. A little
girl of two and a half years had observed that when her mother
allowed her to take, eat, or drink something, she would say
‘prendilo’ (take it), ‘bevilo’ (drink it), or ‘mangialo’ (eat it). She
proceeded to make a kind of adjective or substantive out of each of
these, asking ‘é prendilo?’ ‘é bevilo?’ ‘é mangialo?’ i.e., ‘Is it takable
or a case of taking?’ etc., when she wanted to take, drink, or eat
something.[100] By such skilful artifices does the little word-builder
find his way to the names which he has need of.
In certain cases these original constructions are of a more clumsy
order and due to a partial forgetfulness of a word and an effort to
complete it. Thus a boy of four spoke of being ‘sorrified,’ where he
was evidently led out of the right track by the analogy of ‘horrified’.
The same little boy who talked of his ‘digs’ used the word
‘magnicious’ for ‘magnificent’. This is a choice example of word-
transformation. No doubt the child was led by the feeling for the
sound of this termination in other grand words, as ‘ambitious’.
Possible, too, he might have heard the form ‘magnesia’ and been
influenced by a reminiscence of this sound-complex. The talk of
‘Jeames’ with which Mr. Punch makes us acquainted is full of just
such delightful missings of the mark in trying to reproduce big
words.
 Sentence-building.
We may now follow the child in his later and more ambitious
linguistic efforts. The transition to this higher plane is marked by the
use of the completed form of thought, the sentence.
At first, as already pointed out, there is no sentence-structure.
The child begins to talk by using single words. These words consist
of what we call substantives, as ‘Mamma,’ ‘nurse,’ ‘milk,’ a few
adjectives, as ‘hot,’ ‘nice,’ ‘good,’ a still smaller number of adverbial
signs, as ‘ta-ta,’ or ‘away,’ ‘over,’ ‘down,’ ‘up,’ and one or two verb-
forms, apparently imperatives, as ‘go’. The exact order in which
these appear, and the proportion between the different classes of
constituents at a particular age, say two and a half or three, appear
to vary greatly. Words descriptive of actions, though very few at
first, appear to grow numerous in a later stage.[101]
In speaking of these words as substantives, adjectives, and so
forth, I am merely adopting a convenient mode of description. We
must not suppose that the words as used in this simple disjointed
talk have their full grammatical value. It is not generally recognised
that the single-worded utterance of the child is an abbreviated
sentence or ‘sentence-word’ analogous to the sentence-words found
in the simplest known stage of adult language. As with the race so
with the child, the sentence precedes the word. Moreover, each of
the child’s so-called words in his single-worded talk stands for a
considerable variety of sentence-forms. Thus the words in the child’s
vocabulary which we call substantives do duty for verbs and so forth.
As Preyer remarks, ‘chair’ (stuhl) means ‘There is no chair,’ ‘I want to
be put in the chair,’ ‘The chair is broken,’ and so forth. In like manner
‘dow’ (down) may mean ‘The spoon has fallen down,’ ‘I am down,’ ‘I
want to go down,’ etc.[102] The particular shade of meaning intended
is indicated by intonation and gesture.
This sentence-construction begins with a certain timidity. The age
at which it is first observed varies greatly. It seems in most cases to
be somewhere about the twenty-first month, yet I find good
observers among my correspondents giving as dates eighteen and a
half and nineteen months; and a friend of mine, a Professor of
Literature, tells me that his boy formed simple sentences as early as
fifteen months. We commonly have at first quite short sentences
formed by two words in apposition. These may consist of what we
should call an adjective added to and qualifying a substantive, as in
the simple utterance of the child C., ‘Big bir’ (bird), or the
exclamation, ‘Papa no’ (Papa’s nose); or they may arise by a
combination of substantives, as in the sentence given by Tracy, ‘Papa
cacker,’ i.e., ‘Papa has crackers,’ and one quoted by Preyer, ‘Auntie
cake’ (German, ‘Danna Kuha,’ i.e., ‘Tante Kuche’) for ‘Auntie has
given me cake’; and in a somewhat different example of a
compound sentence also given by Preyer, ‘Home milk’ (German,
‘Haim Mimi’), interpreted as ‘I want to go home and have milk’. In
the case of one child about the age of twenty-three months most of
the sentences were composed of two words, one of which was a
verb in the imperative. The love of commanding, so strong in the
child, makes the use of the imperative, as is seen in this case, very
common. M.’s first performance in sentence-building (at eighteen
and a half months) was, ‘Mamma, tie,’ i.e., ‘tie gloves’.
Little by little the learner manages longer sentences, economising
his resources to the utmost, troubling nothing about inflections or
the insertion of prepositions so as to indicate precise relations, but
leaving his hearer to discover his meaning as best he may; and it is
truly wonderful how much the child manages to express in this rude
fashion. A boy nineteen and a half months old gave this elaborate
order to his father: ‘Dada toe toe ba,’ that is, ‘Dada is to go and put
his toes in the bath’. Pollock’s little girl in the first essay at sentence-
building, recorded at the age of twenty-one and a half months,
actually managed a neat antithesis: ‘Cabs dati, clam clin,’ that is to
say, ‘Cabs are dirty, and the perambulator is clean’. Preyer’s boy in
the beginning of the third year brought out the following, ‘Mimi atta
teppa papa oi,’ that is to say, ‘Milch atta Teppich Papa fui,’ which
appears to have signified, “The milk is gone, it is on the carpet, and
papa said ‘Fie’”. It may be added that the difficulties of deciphering
these early sentences is aggravated by the frequent resort to slurs,
as when a child says, ‘m’ out’ for ‘take me out,’ ‘’t on’ for ‘put it on’.
The order of words in these first tentative sentences is noticeable.
Sometimes the subject is placed after the predicate, as in an
example given by Pollock, ‘Run away man,’ i.e., ‘The man runs (or
has run) away,’ and in the still quainter example given by the same
writer, ‘Out-pull-baby ’pecs (spectacles),’ i.e., ‘Baby pulls or will pull
out the spectacles’. In like manner the adjective used as predicate
may precede the subject, as in the examples given by Maillet, ‘Jolie
la fleur,’ etc.[103] Sometimes, again, the object comes before the verb,
as apparently in the following example given by Miss Shinn: a little
girl delighted at the prospect of going out to see the moon
exclaimed, “Moo-ky (sky), baby shee (see)”.[104] Here is a delightful
example of a transposition of subject and object. A boy two years
and three months asked, ‘Did Ack (Alec) chocke an apple?’ i.e., ‘Did
an apple choke Alec?’ though in this case we very probably have to
do with a misunderstanding of the action choke. Other kinds of
inversion occur when more complex experiments are attempted, as
in connecting ‘my’ with an adjective. Thus one child said prettily,
‘Poor my friends’;[105] which archaic form may be compared with the
following Gallic-looking idiom used by M. at the age of one year ten
months: ‘How Babba (baby, i.e., herself) does feed nicely!’ The same
little girl put the auxiliary out of its place, saying, ‘Tan (can) Babba
wite’ for ‘Baby can write,’ though this was probably a reminiscence of
the question-form.
These inversions of our familiar order are suggestive. They have
some resemblance to the curious order which appears in the
spontaneous sign-making of deaf-mutes. Thus a deaf-mute
answered the question, ‘Who made God?’ by saying, “God made
nothing,” i.e., “nothing made God”. Similarly the deaf-mute Laura
Bridgman expressed the petition, ‘Give Laura bread,’ by the form,
‘Laura bread give.’[106] Such inversions, as we know, are allowable
and common in certain languages, e.g., Latin. The study of the
syntax of child-language and of the sign-making of deaf-mutes
might suggest that our English order is not in certain cases the most
natural one.
 A somewhat similar inversion of what seems to us the proper
order appears in the child’s first attempts at negation. The child C.
early in his third year expressed the idea that he was not going into
the sea thus: ‘N. (his own name) go in water, no’. Similarly Pollock’s
child expressed acquiescence in a prohibition in this manner, ‘Baby
have papa (pepper) no,’ where the ‘no’ followed without a pause.
The same order appears in the case of French children, e.g., ‘Papa
non,’ i.e., ‘It is not Papa,’ and seems to be a common, if not a
universal form of the first half-spontaneous sentence-building. Here
again we see an analogy to the syntax of deaf-mutes, who appear to
append the sign of negation in a similar way, e.g., ‘Teacher I beat,
deceive, scold no,’ i.e., ‘I must not beat, deceive, scold my teacher’.
We see something like it, too, in the formations of savage-
languages, as when ‘fool no’ comes to be the sign of ‘not fool,’ that
is of wise.[107] When ‘not’ comes into use it is apt to be put in a
wrong place, as when the little girl M. said, ‘No Babba look’ (i.e.,
‘Babba will not look’), and ‘Mr. Dill not did tum’ for ‘Mr. Gill did not
come’.[108]
Another closely related characteristic of this early childish
sentence-building is the love of antithesis under the form of two
balancing statements. Thus a child will often oppose an affirmative
to a negative statement as a means of bringing out the full meaning
of the former. The boy C., for example, would say, ‘This a nice bow-
wow, not nasty bow-wow’. The little girl M. said, ‘Boo (the name of
her cat) dot (got) tail; poor Babba dot no tail,’ proceeding to search
for a tail under her skirts. This use of a negative statement by way
of contrast or opposition to an affirmative grew in the case of one
child aged two years and two months into a habit of description by
negations. Thus an orange was described by the saying, ‘No, ’tisn’t
apple,’ porridge by ‘No, ’tisn’t bread and milk’. It is interesting to
note that deaf-mutes proceed in a similar fashion by way of
antithetic negative statement. Thus one of these expressed the
thought, ‘I must love and honour my teacher,’ by the order, ‘Teacher
I beat, deceive, scold no!—I love honour yes!’[109]
These first essays in the construction of sentences illustrate the
skill of the child in eking out his scanty vocabulary by help of a
metaphorical transference of meaning. Taine gives a charming
example of this device. A little girl of eighteen months had acquired
the word ‘Coucou’ as used by her mother or nurse when playfully
hiding behind a door or chair, and the expression ‘ça brûle’ as
employed to warn her that her dinner was too hot, or that she must
put on her hat in the garden to keep off the hot sun. One day on
seeing the sun disappear behind a hill she exclaimed, ‘A bûle
coucou’.[110]
It is a fearful moment when the child first tries his hand at
inflections, and, more especially in our language, those of verbs.
Pollock’s child made the attempt, and successfully, at the age of
twenty-two months. Such first essays are probably examples of pure
imitation, the precise forms used having been previously heard from
others. Hence while they show a growing power of thought, of a
differencing of the relations of number and time, they do not involve
verbal construction properly so called. This last appears as soon as
the child carries over his knowledge of particular cases of verbal
inflection and applies it to new words. This involves a nascent
appreciation of the reason or rule according to which words are
modified. The development of this feeling for the general mode of
verbal change underlies all the later advance in correct speaking.
While the little explorer in the terra incognita of language can
proceed safely in this direction up to a certain point he is apt, as we
all know, to stumble now and again; nor is this to be wondered at
when we remember the intricacies, the irregularities, which
characterise a language like ours. In trying, for example, to manage
the preterite of an English verb he is certain, as, indeed, is the
foreigner, to go wrong. The direction of the error is often in the
transformation of the weak to the strong form; as when ‘screamed’
becomes ‘scram,’ ‘split’ (preterite) ‘splat’ or ‘splut,’ and so forth. In
other cases the child wall convert a strong into a weak form, as
when Laura Bridgman, like many another child, would say, ‘I eated,’
‘I seed,’ and so forth.[111] Sometimes, again, delightful doublings of
the past tense occur, as ‘sawed’ for ‘saw,’ ‘eatened’ for ‘eaten,’ ‘didn’t
saw’ for ‘didn’t see,’ ‘did you gave me?’ for ‘did you give me?’ Active
and passive forms are sometimes confused, as when M. said ‘not
yike being picking up’ for ‘not like being picked up,’ etc. It is curious
to note the different lines of imitative construction followed out in
these cases.
One thing seems clear here: the child’s instinct is to simplify our
forms, to get rid of irregularities. This is strikingly illustrated in the
use of the heterogeneous assemblage of forms known as the verb
‘to be’. It is really hard on a child to expect him to answer the
question, ‘Are you good now?’ by saying, ‘Yes, I am’. He says, of
course, ‘Yes, I are’. Perhaps the poor verb ‘to be’ has suffered every
kind of violence at the hands of children.[112] Thus the child M. used
the form ‘bēd’ for ‘was’. Professor Max Müller somewhere says that
children are the purifiers of language. Would it not be well if they
could become its simplifiers also, and give us in place of this
congeries of unrelated sounds one good decent verb-form?
Other quaint transformations occur when the child begins to
combine words, as when M. joining adverb to verb invented the form
of past tense ‘fall downed’ for ‘fell down’. Another queer form is ‘Am’t
I?’ used for ‘am I not?’ after the pattern of ‘aren’t we?’ An even finer
linguistic stroke than this, is ‘Bettern’t you?’ for ‘Had you not better?’
where the child was evidently trying to get in the form ‘hadn’t you,’
along with the awkward ‘better,’ which seemed to belong to the ‘had,’
and solved the problem by treating ‘better’ as the verb, and
dropping ‘had’ altogether.
A study of these solecisms, which are nearly always amusing, and
sometimes daintily pretty, is useful to mothers and young teachers
by way of showing how much hard work, how much of real
conjectural inference, enters into children’s essays in talking. We
ought not to wonder that they now and again slip; rather ought we
to wonder that, with all the intricacies and pitfalls of our language—
this applies of course with especial force to the motley irregular
English tongue—they slip so rarely. As a matter of fact, the latter
and more ‘correct’ talk—which is correct just because the child has
stored up a good stock of particular word-forms, and consequently
has a much wider range of pure uninventive imitation—is less
admirable than the early inventive imitation; for this last not only has
the quality of originality, but shows the germ of a truly grammatical
feeling for the general types or norms of the language.
The English child is not much troubled by inflections of
substantives. The pronouns, however, as intelligent mothers know,
are apt to cause much heart-burning to the little linguist. The
mastery of ‘I’ and ‘you,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine,’ etc., forms an epoch in the
development of the linguistic faculty and of the power of thought
which is so closely correlated with this. Hence it will repay a brief
inspection.
As is well known, children begin by speaking of themselves and of
those whom they address by names, as when they say, ‘Baby good,’
‘Mamma come’. This is sometimes described as speaking “in the
third person,” yet this is not quite accurate, seeing that there is as
yet no distinction of person at all in the child’s language.
The first use of ‘I’ and ‘you’ between two and three years is apt to
be erroneous. The child proceeds imitatively to use ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘my’ for
‘you’ and ‘your’. Thus one child said, ‘What I’m going to do,’ for,
‘What are you going to do?’ In this case, it is plain, there is no clear
grasp of what we mean by subject, or of the exact relation of this
subject to the person he is addressing.
Yet along with this mechanical repetition of the pronominal forms
we see the beginnings of an intelligent use of them. So far as I can
ascertain most children begin to say ‘me’ or ‘my’ before they say
‘you’. Yet I have met with one or two apparent exceptions to this
rule. Thus the boy C. certainly seemed to get hold of the form of the
second person before that of the first, and the priority of ‘you’ is
attested in another case sent to me. It is desirable to get more
observations on this point.
To determine the exact date at which an intelligent use of the first
person appears, is much less easy than it looks. The ‘I’ is apt to
appear momentarily and then disappear, as when M. at the age of
nineteen months three weeks was observed to say ‘I did’ once,
though she did not use ‘I’ again until some time afterwards. Allowing
for these difficulties it may be said with some degree of confidence
that the great transition from ‘baby’ to ‘I’ is wont to take place in
favourable cases early in the first half of the third year. Thus among