64. See Preyer, op. cit., pp. 353, 390, 391.
65. See the quotation from Lieber, in Taine’s On Intelligence, part ii., book iv., chap. i. The sign for ‘I want to eat’ is in some cases formed by a generalising process out of a sound supplied by another, as the name of a particular edible. See the example given by Preyer, op. cit., p. 362.
66. See Mind, vol. ii., p. 293.
67. See Mind, vol. ii., p. 255.
68. Op. cit., p. 358.
69. A fact that appears to tell against imitation here is that one little boy of seventeen months used the sound ‘did’n’ for anything to eat.
70. Quoted by Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 143.
71. The concerted cries during co-operative work to which Noirée ascribes the origin of language-sounds would seem, while having a special physiological cause as concomitant and probably auxiliary motor processes, to be analogous at least to emotional cries, in so far as they spring out of a peculiar condition of feeling, that of effort. On the other hand, as concerted they came under the head of imitative movements. So far as I can learn the nursery supplies no analogies to these utterances.
72. His brother when one year old called his nurse, whose real name was Maud, Bur, which was probably a rough rendering of ‘nurse’.
73. For a summary of Professor Hale’s researches see Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 138 ff.
74. Of course, as Max Müller says (The Science of Language, i., p. 481 f.), the facts ascertained do not prove that ‘infants left to themselves would invent a language’. The influence of example, the appeal to the imitative impulse, has been at work before the inventions appear. Yet they do, I think, show that they have the sign-making instinct, and might develop this to some extent even were the educative influence of others’ language removed.
75. Preyer’s boy gave the first distinct imitative response to articulate sound in the eleventh month. This is, so far as I can ascertain, behind the average attainment.
76. Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 71.
77. In the reduction of ‘Constance’ to ‘tun’ the same thing is seen, for this child uniformly turned k’s into t’s. Cf. Preyer, op. cit., p. 397.
78. It has been pointed out to me by Dr. Postgate that the secondary stress on the first syllable of English words over four syllables (and some four-syllabled words) may assist in impressing the first syllable.
79. Recent psychological experiments show that similar influences are at work when a person attempts to repeat a long series of verbal sounds, say ten or twelve nonsense syllables. Initial or final position or accent may favour the reproduction of a member of such a series.
80. Here again we see a similarity between a child’s repetition of a name heard, and an adult’s attempt to repeat a long series of syllabic sounds. In the latter case also there is a general tendency to preserve the length and rhythmic form of the whole series.
81. With the diphthong or glide ī may be taken oi, which was first mastered by the child M. at the age of two years three months.
82. I find according to the notes sent me that the sounds s and sh develop unequally in the cases of different children. Some acquire s, others sh before the other.
83. See Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 15.
84. See Sievers, Phonetik, p. 230.
85. Cf. Pollock, Mind, vi., p. 436, and Preyer, op. cit., p. 434.
86. The same child, capriciously as it might look, would sometimes avoid y, as in saying ‘esh’ for ‘yes,’ though she regularly used this sound as a substitute for l, saying ‘yook’ for ‘look,’ and so on.
87. See Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 33; cf. also the change of ‘frith’ to ‘firth’.
88. Op. cit., p. 397.
89. See Tylor, Primitive Culture, i., 198. On the taking up of baby reduplications into language see the same work, i., 204. Cf. the same writer’s Anthropology, p. 129.
90. See above, p. 137; cf. Sievers, Phonetik, p. 236.
91. Dr. Postgate suggests that the current terms ‘progressive’ and ‘regressive’ would be better rendered by ‘retrospective’ and ‘prospective’.
92. As samples of the observations the following may be taken. A friend tells me his boy when one year old used just 50 vocables. The performances vary greatly. One American girl of twenty-two months had 69, whereas another about the same age had 136, just twice the number. A German girl eighteen months old is said by Preyer to have used 119 words, and to have raised this to 435 in the next six months. The composition of these early vocabularies will occupy us presently.
93. Quoted by Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 283.
94. Logic (University Extension Manuals), pp. 83-84.
95. See op. cit., p. 420, also pp. 414 and 418.
96. Paola Lombroso, Saggi di Psicologia del Bambino, p. 16.
97. See Trench’s account of poetry in words, On the Study of Words, lect. vi.
98. Tylor, Anthropology, chap. v.
99. Compayré, op. cit., p. 249, where other examples are given.
100. Op. cit., p. 12.
101. For lists of vocabularies and an analysis of their composition see Preyer, op. cit. (4th ed.), p. 372 ff.; Tracy, Psychology of Childhood, p. 76 ff.
102. See Preyer, op. cit., p. 361; Romanes, op. cit., p. 296 ff.
103. See Compayré, op. cit., p. 206.
104. Notes on the Development of a Child, p. 84.
105. Canton, The Invisible Playmate, p. 32, who adds that this exactly answers to the form, “Good my lord!”
106. See Romanes, op. cit., p. 116 f., where other examples may be found.
107. Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, p. 391 ff.
108. It may be added that this child regularly used ‘not’ or ‘n’t’ as a negating or cancelling sign for the whole sentence, saying, for example, ‘Babba mus’n’t go in,’ for ‘Babba may stay out’.
109. A curious example of negative antithesis is given by Perez, op. cit., p. 196. On other analogies between the syntax of children and of deaf-mutes, see Compayré, op. cit., p. 251 f.
110. On Intelligence, pt. i., bk. i., chap. ii., sect. vi.
111. The same double tendency from weak to strong forms and vice versâ is seen in the list of transformed past participles given by Preyer, op. cit., p. 360.
112. Cf. Preyer’s account of a German child’s liberties with the same verb, where we find ‘gebisst,’ ‘binnst,’ and other odd forms, op. cit., p. 438.
113. Preyer (op. cit., Cap. 22) seems to argue that children have a clear self-consciousness before they attempt to use the forms ‘I,’ etc.; and that the acquisition of the latter is due to imitation. But he does not show why this imitation should begin to work so powerfully at a particular period of linguistic development.
115. For a fuller account of this progress, the reader cannot do better than consult Preyer, op. cit., Cap. 20 and 21.
116. Worcester Collection, p. 21.
117. Cf. the account Goltz gives of the anxiety he felt as a child on hearing that his uvula (zapfen) had ‘fallen down,’ op. cit., p. 261.
118. In the Illustrated London News, 30th June, 1894.
119. Of course defective auditory apprehension may assist in these cases. Goltz gives an example from his own childhood. He took the words “Namen nennen Dich nicht” to be “Namen nenne Dich nicht,” and was sorely puzzled at the idea of bidding a name not to name itself.
120. Psalm cxxxix. and Second Commandment, Prayer-book version.
121. The Invisible Playmate, p. 35.
122. The other form of the word, ‘craw-fish,’ seems a still more ingenious example of folk-etymology.
123. These last are taken from a good list of children’s punnings in Dr. Stanley Hall’s article, “The Contents of Children’s Minds”.
124. That is, I take it, the majority, viz., Italians and English.
125. Both of these are given by Paola Lombroso in the work already quoted.