CHAPTER V

SOUNDS

§ 1. From Screaming to Talking. § 2. First Sounds. § 3. Sound-laws of the Next Stage. § 4. Groups of Sounds. § 5. Mutilations and Reduplications. § 6. Correction. § 7. Tone.

V.--§ 1. From Screaming to Talking.

A Danish philosopher has said: “In his whole life man achieves nothing so great and so wonderful as what he achieved when he learnt to talk.” When Darwin was asked in which three years of his life a man learnt most, he said: “The first three.”

A child’s linguistic development covers three periods--the screaming time, the crowing or babbling time, and the talking time. But the last is a long one, and must again be divided into two periods--that of the “little language,” the child’s own language, and that of the common language or language of the community. In the former the child is linguistically an individualist, in the latter he is more and more socialized.

Of the screaming time little need be said. A child’s scream is not uttered primarily as a means of conveying anything to others, and so far is not properly to be called speech. But if from the child’s side a scream is not a way of telling anything, its elders may still read something in it and hurry to relieve the trouble. And if the child comes to remark--as it soon will--that whenever it cries someone comes and brings it something pleasant, if only company, it will not be long till it makes use of this instrument whenever it is uneasy or wants something. The scream, which was at first a reflex action, is now a voluntary action. And many parents have discovered that the child has learnt to use its power of screaming to exercise a tyrannical power over them--so that they have had to walk up and down all night with a screaming child that prefers this way of spending the night to lying quietly in its cradle. The only course is brutally to let the baby scream till it is tired, and persist in never letting it get its desire _because_ it screams for it, but only because what it desires is good for it. The child learns its lesson, and a scream is once more what it was at first, an involuntary, irresistible result of the fact that something is wrong.

Screaming has, however, another side. It is of physiological value as an exercise of all the muscles and appliances which are afterwards to be called into play for speech and song. Nurses say--and there may be something in it--that the child who screams loudest as a baby becomes the best singer later.

Babbling time produces pleasanter sounds which are more adapted for the purposes of speech. Cooing, crowing, babbling--i.e. uttering meaningless sounds and series of sounds--is a delightful exercise like sprawling with outstretched arms and legs or trying to move the tiny fingers. It has been well said that for a long time a child’s dearest toy is its tongue--that is, of course, not the tongue only, but the other organs of speech as well, especially the lips and vocal chords. At first the movements of these organs are as uncontrolled as those of the arms, but gradually they become more systematic, and the boy knows what sound he wishes to utter and is in a position to produce it exactly.

First, then, come single vowels or vowels with a single consonant preceding them, as _la_, _ra_, _lö_, etc., though a baby’s sounds cannot be identified with any of ours or written down with our letters. For, though the head and consequently the mouth capacity is disproportionally great in an infant and grows more rapidly than its limbs, there is still a great difference between its mouth capacity and that required to utter normal speech-sounds. I have elsewhere (PhG, p. 81 ff.) given the results of a series of measurings of the jaw in children and adults and discussed the importance of these figures for phonetic theory: while there is no growth of any importance during the talking period (for a child of five may have the same jaw-length as a man of thirty-seven), the growth is enormous during the first months of a child’s life: in the case of my own child, from 45 mm. a few days after birth to 60 mm. at three months old and 75 mm. at eleven months, while the average of grown-up men is 99 mm. and of women 93 mm. The consequence is that the sounds of the baby are different from ours, and that even when they resemble ours the mechanism of production may be different from the normal one; when my son during the first weeks said something like _la_, I was able to see distinctly that the tip of the tongue was not at all in the position required for our _l_. This want of congruence between the acoustic manners of operation in the infant and the adult no doubt gives us the key to many of the difficulties that have puzzled previous observers of small children.

Babbling or crowing begins not earlier than the third week; it may be, not till the seventh or eighth week. The first sound exercises are to be regarded as muscular exercises pure and simple, as is clear from the fact that deaf-mutes amuse themselves with them, although they cannot themselves hear them. But the moment comes when the hearing child finds a pleasure in hearing its own sounds, and a most important step is taken when the little one begins to hear a resemblance between the sounds uttered by its mother or nurse and its own. The mother will naturally answer the baby’s syllables by repeating the same, and when the baby recognizes the likeness, it secures an inexhaustible source of pleasure, and after some time reaches the next stage, when it tries itself to imitate what is said to it (generally towards the close of the first year). The value of this exercise cannot be over-estimated: the more that parents understand how to play this game with the baby--of saying something and letting the baby say it after, however meaningless the syllable-sequences that they make--the better will be the foundation for the child’s later acquisition and command of language.

V.--§ 2. First Sounds.

It is generally said that the order in which the child learns to utter the different sounds depends on their difficulty: the easiest sounds are produced first. That is no doubt true in the main; but when we go into details we find that different writers bring forward lists of sounds in different order. All are agreed, however, that among the consonants the labials, _p_, _b_ and _m_, are early sounds, if not the earliest. The explanation has been given that the child can see the working of his mother’s lips in these sounds and therefore imitates her movements. This implies far too much conscious thought on the part of the baby, who utters his ‘ma’ or ‘mo’ before he begins to imitate anything said to him by his surroundings. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the child’s attention is hardly ever given to its mother’s mouth, but is steadily fixed on her eyes. The real reason is probably that the labial muscles used to produce _b_ or _m_ are the same that the baby has exercised in sucking the breast or the bottle. It would be interesting to learn if blind children also produce the labial sounds first.

Along with the labial sounds the baby produces many other sounds--vowel and consonant--and in these cases one is certain that it has not been able to see how these sounds are produced by its mother. Even in the case of the labials we know that what distinguishes _m_ from _b_, the lowering of the soft palate, and _b_ from _p_, the vibrations of the vocal chords, is invisible. Some of the sounds produced by means of the tongue may be too hard to pronounce till the muscles of the tongue have been exercised in consequence of the child having begun to eat more solid things than milk.

By the end of the first year the number of sounds which the little babbler has mastered is already considerable, and he loves to combine long series of the same syllables, dadadada ..., nenenene ..., bygnbygnbygn ..., etc. That is a game which need not even cease when the child is able to talk actual language. It is strange that among an infant’s sounds one can often detect sounds--for instance _k_, _g_, _h_, and uvular _r_--which the child will find difficulty in producing afterwards when they occur in real words, or which may be unknown to the language which it will some day speak. The explanation lies probably in the difference between doing a thing in play or without a plan--when it is immaterial which movement (sound) is made--and doing the same thing of fixed intention when this sound, and this sound only, is required, at a definite point in the syllable, and with this or that particular sound before and after. Accordingly, great difficulties come to be encountered when the child begins more consciously and systematically to imitate his elders. Some sounds come without effort and may be used incessantly, to the detriment of others which the child may have been able previously to produce in play; and a time even comes when the stock of sounds actually diminishes, while particular sounds acquire greater precision. Dancing masters, singing masters and gymnastic teachers have similar experiences. After some lessons the child may seem more awkward than it was before the lessons began.

The ‘little language’ which the child makes for itself by imperfect imitation of the sounds of its elders seems so arbitrary that it may well be compared to the child’s first rude drawings of men and animals. A Danish boy named _Gustav_ (1.6)[17] called himself [dodado] and turned the name _Karoline_ into [nnn]. Other Danish children made _skammel_ into [gramn] or [gap], _elefant_ into [vat], _Karen_ into [gaja], etc. A few examples from English children: Hilary M. (1.6) called _Ireland_ (her sister) [a·ni], Gordon M. (1.10) called _Millicent_ (his sister) [dadu·]. Tony E. (1.11) called his playmate _Sheila_ [dubabud].

V.--§ 3. Sound-laws of the Next Stage.

As the child gets away from the peculiarities of his individual ‘little language,’ his speech becomes more regular, and a linguist can in many cases see reasons for his distortions of normal words. When he replaces one sound by another there is always some common element in the formation of the two sounds, which causes a kindred impression on the ear, though _we_ may have difficulty in detecting it because we are so accustomed to noticing the difference. There is generally a certain system in the sound substitutions of children, and in many instances we are justified in speaking of ‘strictly observed sound-laws.’ Let us now look at some of these.

Children in all countries tend to substitute [t] for [k]: both sounds are produced by a complete stoppage of the breath for the moment by the tongue, the only difference being that it is the back of the tongue which acts in one case, and the tip of the tongue in the other. A child who substitutes _t_ for _k_ will also substitute _d_ for _g_; if he says ‘tat’ for ‘cat’ he will say ‘do’ for ‘go.’

_R_ is a difficult sound. Hilary M. (2.0) has no _r_’s in her speech. Initially they become _w_, as in [wʌn] for ‘run,’ medially between vowels they become _l_, as in [veli, beli] for ‘very, berry,’ in consonantal combinations they are lost, as in [kai, bʌʃ] for ‘cry, brush.’ Tony E. (1.10 to 3.0) for medial _r_ between vowels first substituted _d_, as in [vedi] for ‘very,’ and later _g_ [vegi]; similarly in [mu·gi] for ‘Muriel,’ [tægi] for ‘carry’; he often dropped initial _r_, e.g. _oom_ for ‘room.’ It is not unusual for children who use _w_ for _r_ in most combinations to say [tʃ] for _tr_ and [dʒ] for _dr_, as in ‘chee,’ ‘jawer’ for ‘tree,’ ‘drawer.’ This illustrates the fact that what to us is _one_ sound, and therefore represented in writing by _one_ letter, appears to the child’s ear as different sounds--and generally the phonetician will agree with the child that there are really differences in the articulation of the sound according to position in the syllable and to surroundings, only the child exaggerates the dissimilarities, just as we in writing one and the same letter exaggerate the similarity.

The two _th_ sounds offer some difficulties and are often imitated as _f_ and _v_ respectively, as in ‘frow’ and ‘muvver’ for ‘throw’ and ‘mother’; others say ‘ze’ or ‘de’ for ‘the.’ Hilary M. (2.0) has great difficulty with _th_ and _s_; _th_ usually becomes [ʃ], [beʃ, ti·ʃ, ʃri·] for ‘Beth,’ ‘teeth,’ ‘three’; _s_ becomes [ʃ], e.g. [franʃiʃ, ʃti·m] for ‘Francis,’ ‘steam’; in the same way _z_ becomes [ʒ] as in [lʌbʒ, bouʒ] for ‘loves,’ ‘Bowes’; _sw_ becomes [fw] as in [fwiŋ, fwi·t] for ‘swing,’ ‘sweet.’ She drops _l_ in consonantal combinations, e.g. [ki·n, kaim, kɔk, ʃi·p] for ‘clean,’ ‘climb,’ ‘clock,’ ‘sleep.’

Sometimes it requires a phonetician’s knowledge to understand the individual sound-laws of a child. Thus I pick out from some specimens given by O’Shea, p. 135 f. (girl, 2.9), the following words: _pell_ (smell), _teeze_ (sneeze), _poke_ (smoke), _tow_ (snow), and formulate the rule: _s_ + a nasal became the voiceless stop corresponding to the nasal, a kind of assimilation, in which the place of articulation and the mouth-closure of the nasals were preserved, and the sound was made unvoiced and non-nasal as the _s_. In other combinations _m_ and _n_ were intact.

Some further faults are illustrated in Tony E.’s [tʃouz, pʌg, pus, tæm, pʌm, bæk, pi·z, nouʒ, ɔk, es, u·] for _clothes_, _plug_, _push_, _tram_, _plum_, _black_, _please_, _nose_, _clock_, _yes_, _you_.

V.--§ 4. Groups of Sounds.

Even when a sound by itself can be pronounced, the child often finds it hard to pronounce it when it forms part of a group of sounds. _S_ is often dropped before another consonant, as in ‘tummy’ for ‘stomach.’ Other examples have already been given above. Hilary M. (2.0) had difficulty with _lp_ and said [hæpl] for ‘help.’ She also said [ointən] for ‘ointment’; C. M. L. (2.3) said ‘sikkums’ for ‘sixpence.’ Tony E. (2.0) turns _grannie_ into [nægi]. When initial consonant groups are simplified, it is generally, though not always, the stop that remains: _b_ instead of _bl-_, _br-_, _k_ instead of _kr-_, _sk-_, _skr-_, _p_ instead of _pl-_, _pr-_, _spr-_, etc. For the groups occurring medially and finally no general rule seems possible.

V.--§ 5. Mutilations and Reduplications.

To begin with, the child is unable to master long sequences of syllables; he prefers monosyllables and often emits them singly and separated by pauses. Even in words that to us are inseparable wholes some children will make breaks between syllables, e.g. Shef-field, Ing-land. But more often they will give only part of the word, generally the last syllable or syllables; hence we get pet-names like _Bet_ or _Beth_ for Elizabeth and forms like ‘tatoes’ for potatoes, ‘chine’ for machine, ‘tina’ for concertina, ‘tash’ for moustache, etc. Hilary M. (1.10) called an express-cart a _press-cart_, bananas and pyjamas _nanas_ and _jamas_.

It is not, however, the production of long sequences of syllables in itself that is difficult to the child, for in its meaningless babbling it may begin very early to pronounce long strings of sounds without any break; but the difficulty is to remember what sounds have to be put together to bring about exactly this or that word. We grown-up people may experience just the same sort of difficulty if after hearing once the long name of a Bulgarian minister or a Sanskrit book we are required to repeat it at once. Hence we should not wonder at such pronunciations as [pekəlout] for _petticoat_ or [efelənt] for _elephant_ (Beth M., 2.6); Hilary M. called a _caterpillar_ a _pillarcat_. Other transpositions are _serreval_ for _several_ and _ocken_ for _uncle_; cf. also _wops_ for _wasp_.

To explain the frequent reduplications found in children’s language it is not necessary, as some learned authors have done, to refer to the great number of reduplicated words in the languages of primitive tribes and to see in the same phenomenon in our own children an atavistic return to primitive conditions, on the Häckelian assumption that the development of each individual has to pass rapidly through the same (‘phylogenetic’) stages as the whole lineage of his ancestors. It is simpler and more natural to refer these reduplications to the pleasure always felt in repeating the same muscular action until one is tired. The child will repeat over and over again the same movements of legs and arms, and we do the same when we wave our hand or a handkerchief or when we nod our head several times to signify assent, etc. When we laugh we repeat the same syllable consisting of _h_ and a more or less indistinct vowel, and when we sing a melody without words we are apt to ‘reduplicate’ indefinitely. Thus also with the little ones. Apart from such words as _papa_ and _mamma_, to which we shall have to revert in another chapter (VIII, § 8), children will often form words from those of their elders by repeating one syllable; cf. _puff-puff_, _gee-gee_. Tracy (p. 132) records _pepe_ for ‘pencil,’ _kaka_ for ‘Carrie.’ For a few weeks (1.11) Hilary M. reduplicated whole words, e.g. _king-king_, _ring-ring_ (i.e. bell), _water-water_. Tony F. (1.10) uses [touto] for his own name. Hence pet-names like _Dodo_; they are extremely frequent in French--for instance, _Fifine_, _Lolotte_, _Lolo_, _Mimi_; the name _Daudet_ has arisen in a similar way from _Claudet_, a diminutive of Claude.

* * * * *

It is a similar phenomenon (a kind of partial reduplication) when sounds at a distance affect one another, as when Hilary M. (2.0) said [gɔgi] for _doggie_, [bɔbin] for _Dobbin_, [dezmən di·n] for _Jesmond Dene_, [baikikl] for _bicycle_, [kekl] for _kettle_. Tracy (p. 133) mentions _bopoo_ for ‘bottle,’ in which _oo_ stands for the hollow sound of syllabic _l_. One correspondent mentions _whoofing-cough_ for ‘whooping-cough’ (where the final sound has crept into the first word) and _chicken-pops_ for ‘chicken-pox.’ Some children say ‘aneneme’ for _anemone_; and in S. L. (4.9) this caused a curious confusion during the recent war: “Mother, there must be two sorts of anenemies, flowers and Germans.”

Dr. Henry Bradley once told me that his youngest child had a difficulty with the name _Connie_, which was made alternatingly [tɔni] and [kɔŋi], in both cases with two consonants articulated at the same point. Similar instances are mentioned in German books on children’s language, thus _gigarr_ for ‘zigarre,’ _baibift_ for ‘bleistift,’ _autobobil_ (Meringer),[18] _fotofafieren_ (Stern), _ambam_ for ‘armband,’ _dan_ for ‘dame,’ _pap_ for ‘patte’ (Ronjat). I have given many Danish examples in my Danish book. Grammont’s child (see _Mélanges linguistiques offerts à A. Meillet_, 1902) carried through these changes in a most systematic way.

V.--§ 6. Correction.

The time comes when the child corrects his mistakes--where it said ‘tat’ it now says ‘cat.’ Here there are two possibilities which both seem to occur in actual life. One is that the child hears the correct sound some time before he is able to imitate it correctly; he will thus still say _t_ for _k_, though he may in some way object to other people saying ‘tum’ for ‘come.’ Passy relates how a little French girl would say _tosson_ both for _garçon_ and _cochon_; but she protested when anybody else said “C’est un petit cochon” in speaking about a boy, or vice versa. Such a child, as soon as it can produce the new sound, puts it correctly into all the places where it is required. This, I take it, is the ordinary procedure. Frans (my own boy) could not pronounce _h_ and said _an_, _on_ for the Danish pronouns _han_, _hun_; but when he began to pronounce this sound, he never misplaced it (2.4).

The other possibility is that the child learns how to pronounce the new sound at a time when its own acoustic impression is not yet quite settled; in that case there will be a period during which his use of the new sound is uncertain and fluctuating. When parents are in too great a hurry to get a child out of some false pronunciation, they may succeed in giving it a new sound, but the child will tend to introduce it in places where it does not belong. On the whole, it seems therefore the safest plan to leave it to the child itself to discover that its sound is not the correct one.

Sometimes a child will acquire a sound or a sound combination correctly and then lose it till it reappears a few months later. In an English family where there was no question of the influence of _h_-less servants, each child in succession passed through an _h_-less period, and one of the children, after pronouncing _h_ correctly, lost the use of it altogether for two or three months. I have had similar experiences with Danish children. S. L. (ab. 2) said ‘bontin’ for _bonnet_; but five months earlier she had said _bonnet_ correctly.

The path to perfection is not always a straight one. Tony E. in order to arrive at the correct pronunciation of _please_ passed through the following stages: (1) [bi·], (2) [bli·], (3) [pi·z], (4) [pwi·ʒ], (5) [beisk, meis, mais] and several other impossible forms. Tracy (p. 139) gives the following forms through which the boy A. (1.5) had to pass before being able to say _pussy_: _pooheh_, _poofie_, _poopoohie_, _poofee_. A French child had four forms [mèni, pèti, mèti, mèsi] before being able to say _merci_ correctly (Grammont). A Danish child passed through _bejab_ and _vamb_ before pronouncing _svamp_ (‘sponge’), etc.

It is certain that all this while the little brain is working, and even consciously working, though at first it has not sufficient command of speech to say anything about it. Meringer says that children do not practise, but that their new acquisitions of sounds happen at once without any visible preparation. He may be right in the main with regard to the learning of single sounds, though even there I incline to doubt the possibility of a universal rule; but Ronjat (p. 55) is certainly right as against Meringer with regard to the way in which children learn new and difficult combinations. Here they certainly do practise, and are proudly conscious of the happy results of their efforts. When Frans (2.11) mastered the combination _fl_, he was very proud, and asked his mother: “Mother, can you say _flyve_?”; then he came to me and told me that he could say _bluse_ and _flue_, and when asked whether he could say _blad_, he answered: “No, not yet; Frans cannot say _b-lad_” (with a little interval between the _b_ and the _l_). Five weeks later he said: “Mother, won’t you play upon the _klaver_ (piano)?” and after a little while, “Frans can say _kla_ so well.” About the same time he first mispronounced the word _manchetter_, and then (when I asked what he was saying, without telling him that anything was wrong) he gave it the correct sound, and I heard him afterwards in the adjoining room repeat the word to himself in a whisper.

How well children observe sounds is again seen by the way in which they will correct their elders if they give a pronunciation to which they are not accustomed--for instance, in a verse they have learnt by heart. Beth M (2.6) was never satisfied with her parents’ pronunciation of “What will you buy me when you get there?” She always insisted on their gabbling the first words as quickly as they could and then coming out with an emphatic _there_.

V.--§ 7. Tone.

As to the differences in the tone of a voice, even a baby shows by his expression that he can distinguish clearly between what is said to him lovingly and what sharply, a long time before he understands a single word of what is said. Many children are able at a very early age to hit off the exact note in which something is said or sung. Here is a story of a boy of more advanced age. In Copenhagen he had had his hair cut by a Swedish lady and did not like it. When he travelled with his mother to Norway, as soon as he entered the house, he broke out with a scream: “Mother, I hope I’m not going to have my hair cut?” He had noticed the Norwegian intonation, which is very like the Swedish, and it brought an unpleasant association of ideas.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] In this book the age of a child is indicated by stating the number of years and months completed: 1.6 thus means “in the seventh month of the second year,” etc.

[18] An American child said _autonobile_ [ɔtənobi·l] with partial assimilation of _m_ to the point-stop _t_.