The biography of a baby

says the old saw. But perhaps our baby did not earn the ill omen, it was such a faint foreshadowing of speech that she was guilty of. Probably she would not have been detected in it at all, had not ten months’ practice made us pretty good detectives. Indeed, but for the notebook, by which I could compare from day to day the wavering approach to some meaning in her use of this or that syllable, I should not have dared to be sure there really was a meaning. It is in these formless beginnings of a beginning that we get our best clues (as in all evolutionary studies) to the real secrets of the origin of language.

The little girl, as she came to ten months old, was a greater chatterer than ever, pouring out strings of meaningless syllables in joy or sorrow, with marvelous inflections and changes—such intelligent remarks as “Nĕ-nĕ-oom-bo,” and “Ga-boo-ng,” and “A-did-did-doo,” and certain favored syllables over and over, such as “Dă-dă-dă.”

In the last four days of the tenth month we began to suspect a faint consistency in the use of several of the most common sounds. We began to think that something like “Dă!” (varying loosely to “Gă!” or “Dng!” or “Did-dă!” or “Doo-doo!” but always hovering round plain “Dă!”) was suspiciously often ejaculated when the little one threw out her hand in pointing, or exulted in getting to her feet; that “Nă-nă-nă!” was separating itself out as a wail of unwillingness and protest, and “Mă-mă-mă!” as a whimper of discontent, and loneliness, and desire of attention; while—nearest of all to a true word—a favorite old murmur of “M-gm” or “Ng-gng” recurred so often when something disappeared from sight that we could not but wonder if we had not here an echo of our frequent “All gone!”

All these sounds were used often enough at other times, and other sounds were used in their special places; yet week by week the notebook showed “Dă!” growing into the regular expression of discovering, pointing out, admiring, exulting; “Nă-nă-nă!” into that of refusal and protest; and “Mă-mă-mă,” which soon became “Mom-mom-mom,” into that of a special sort of wanting, which slowly gathered itself about the mother in particular. I do not think that these were echoes of our words “There!” and “No!” and “Mamma;” it was only slowly, and after the baby was a year old, that they came into unison with these words—and in the case of “Mamma,” not without some teaching. It is more likely that we have here a natural cry of pointing out, a natural negative, a natural expression of baby need and dependence, which give us a hint of the origin of our own words.

The fourth sound, however, which developed through many variations (such as “M-gâ,” “Gâ,” or “Gng”) to a clear “Gông,” “A-gông,” and even “Gone,” was plainly an echo. It was used as loosely as it was pronounced: the baby murmured “Ng-gng!” pensively when some one left the room; when she dropped something; when she looked for something she could not find; when she had swallowed a mouthful of food; when she heard a door close. She wounded her father’s feelings by commenting “M-gâ!” as her little hands wandered about the unoccupied top of his head. She remarked “Gông!” when she slipped back in trying to climb a step; when she failed to loosen a cord she wished to play with; when she saw a portière, such as she was used to hide behind; when she was refused a bottle she had begged for. It meant disappearance, absence, failure, denial, and any object associated with these.

In just this fashion, Preyer’s boy used his first word of human speech, at about this age. “Atta!” the little fellow would murmur when some one left the room, or when the light went out—using a favorite old babble of his own, just as our baby did, to help him get hold of a grown-up word, “Adieu” or “Ta-ta,” which carried the meaning he was after. The idea of disappearance—of the thing now seen, now gone—seems to take strong hold on babies very early; I have known several other cases.

In all this we seem to see quite clearly the first steps in language making. The baby begins slowly to turn some of his commonest chattering sounds to special uses—not to carry thought to other people, but as mere exclamations to relieve his own mind. It was just twice within her first year that our baby turned to me when some one left the room, looked in my face, and said “Gông!” At all other times it was only murmured to herself. And most of the exclamations express a mood rather than a real idea; they are halfway between mere cries and words proper. Even when there is plainly an idea, as in “All gone,” it is a big, vague blur of an idea, slowly taking form in the little mind, as the blurs of light and dark slowly outlined themselves into objects before the little eyes months before.

At this point the modern baby catches the trick of helping himself to our words ready made, and (though many glimpses of primitive speech show through the whole process of learning to talk) he thus saves himself in the main the long task of developing them, through which his ancestors toiled.

In fact, the next word our baby took into use, a fortnight later, was lifted bodily from our speech: a reproving “Kha!” by which we tried to disgust her with the state of her fingers after they had been plunged into apple sauce or like matters. She quite understood what it referred to, though she did not share our objection to messy fingers, and thereafter surveyed her own complacently in such plight, and commented, “Kha!” And I may here run ahead so far as to say that this was the full list of her spoken words within the first year, except that in the next month she used an assenting “Ĕ!” which may have been “Yes;” and in the last days of the year she began to exclaim first “By!” then “My!” (corrupted from “By-by”) in saying farewell.

During this fortnight of swift language development the little one’s progress in movements had been slight. But towards the middle of the eleventh month she took a fresh start. One day she raised herself to her feet without anything to hold to; stood on tiptoe to peer over the seat of her high chair; forgot to hold to me, in her eagerness for a fruit I was peeling, and stood alone for a minute and a half at least, while I peeled it and fed it into her mouth; clambered into my lap (as I sat beside her on the floor), setting one little foot up first, laying hold of my shoulder, and tugging herself up with mighty efforts.

She chanced, too, on the art of shoving a chair before her for a step or two; and the next day, in her eagerness to reach a glass of water her father was bringing, she took one unconscious forward step, which ended in prompt collapse on the lawn. But neither of these beginnings was followed up by any real advance in learning to walk. During the rest of the month she edged about more freely, and in the last week pushed chairs before her a little again; and if we supported her and urged her forward, she would walk clumsily, much as a puppy will if you lead him by the fore paws; but she seemed to find the movement scarcely more natural than the puppy does, and always wanted soon to drop down to all-fours.

But climbing was a different matter. Here the baby seemed laid hold of by strong desire and instinct. The day after she climbed into my lap, she spent a long time zealously climbing up a doorstep and letting herself down backward from it. The day after that, she tackled the stairs and climbed two steps. Later in the day, I set her at the bottom of the stairs and moved slowly up before her. The little thing followed after (her mother’s arms close behind, of course; no one would be crazy enough to start a baby upstairs without such precaution), tugging from step to step, grunting with exertion now and then, and exclaiming with satisfaction at each step conquered; slipping back once or twice, but undiscouraged—fifteen steps to the landing, where she pulled to her feet by the stair-post, hesitated, made a motion to creep down head first, then crept, laughing, across the landing, and up five steps more, and shouted with triumph to find herself on the upper floor. She even looked with ambition at the garret stairs, and started towards them; but an open door tempted her aside to explore a room, and she forgot the stairs.

For the rest of the month the baby dropped to hands and knees and scrabbled joyously for the stairs at every chance of open door; she was not satisfied without going up several times daily; and having people who believed in letting her do things, and insuring her safety by vigilance while she did them, instead of by holding her back, she soon became expert and secure in mounting. She made assaults, too, on everything that towered up and looked in the least climbable—boxes, chairs, and all sorts of things, quite beyond her present powers. She seemed possessed by a sort of blind compulsion towards the upward movement.

What are we to make of this strong climbing impulse, this untaught skill in putting up the foot or knee and pulling the body up, while walking is still unnatural? I sought out every record I could find, and the indications are that our baby was not an exception; that as a rule climbing does come before walking, if a baby is left free to develop naturally. Of course in many cases walking is artificially hastened and climbing prevented.

Can we help suspecting a period, somewhere in the remote ages, when the baby’s ancestry dwelt amid the treetops, and learned to stand by balancing on one branch while they held by a higher one? when they edged along the branch, holding on above, but dropped to all-fours and crept when they came to the ground now and then to get from tree to tree? The whole history of the baby’s movements points to this: the strong arms and clinging hands, from birth; the intense impulse to pull up, even from the beginning of sitting; the way in which standing always begins, by laying hold above and pulling up; the slow and doubtful development of creeping, as if the ancestral creature had been almost purely a tree-dweller, with no period of free running on all-fours.

Tree-dwelling creatures, living on the dainties of the forest, fruit and nuts and eggs and birds, are better nourished than the ground-roaming tribes; but that is not half the story. The tree mothers cannot tuck their babies away in a lair and leave them; the tree babies cannot begin early to scramble about, like little cubs—their dwelling is too unsafe. There is nothing for it but the mother’s arms; the baby must be held, and carried, and protected longer than the earth babies. That was the handicap of the tree life, our ancestors might have thought—the helpless babies. But, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, it was that long, helpless babyhood that gave the brain its chance to grow and made us human.

At eleven months old our little girl could stand alone as long as she cared to, though perhaps it was not till the next month that she felt altogether secure on her feet. She could climb up and down stairs with perfect ease. She could walk held by one hand, but she did not care to, and creeping was still her main means of getting anywhere.

Her understanding of speech had grown wonderfully, and as she was docile in obeying directions, I could always find out whether she knew a thing by name by saying, “Point to the rose,” or “Bring the book to aunty,” and thus found it possible to make out a trustworthy list of the words she knew: fifty-one names of people and things; twenty-eight action words, which she proved she understood by obeying (“give” and “sit down,” and the like), and a few adverbial expressions, like “where” and “all gone”—eighty-four words in all, securely associated with ideas. She understood them in simple combinations, too, such as, “Bring mamma Ruth’s shoes;” and often, where she did not know all the words in a sentence, she could guess quite shrewdly from those she did, interpreting our movements vigilantly.

For her own speech, the small set of spoken words she owned was of little use; indeed, as I have said, these were only exclamations. For talking to us she used a wonderfully vivid and delicate language of grunts, and cries, and movements. She would point to her father’s hat, and beg till it was given her; then creep to him and offer the hat, looking up urgently into his face, or perhaps would get to her feet at his side and try to put it on his head; when he put it on, up would go her little arms with pleading cries till he took her, and then she would point to the door and coax to be carried outdoors. She would offer a handkerchief with asking sounds when she wished to play peekaboo; or a whistle, to be blown; or a top, to be spun. When she was carried about the garden or taken driving, or when she crept exploring and investigating about the rooms, she would keep up a most dramatic running comment of interest, joy, inquiry, amusement, desire; and it was remarkable what shades of approval and disapproval, assent, denial, and request she could make perfectly clear.