Part 13

True language-sounds significant of things grow out of this spontaneous expressive articulation. Thus the demonstrative sign _da_ which accompanies the pointing, and which seems to be frequently used with slight modifications by German as well as by English children, is probably in its inception merely an interjectional expression of the faint shock of wonder produced by the appearance in the visual field of a new object. But used as a concomitant of the pointing gesture it takes on a demonstrative or indicative function, announcing the presence or arrival of an object in a particular locality or direction. A somewhat similar case is that of ‘ata’ or ‘tata,’ a sign used to denote the departure or disappearance of an object. These signs are, as Preyer shows, spontaneous and not imitative (_e.g._, of ‘there’ (da), ‘all gone’). This is confirmed by the fact that they vary greatly. Thus Preyer’s boy used for “there” ‘da,’ ‘nda,’ ‘nta,’ etc., and for “all gone” ‘atta,’ ‘f-tu,’ ‘tuff,’ etc. Again, Tiedemann’s boy used the sound ‘ah-ah,’ and one of Stanley Hall’s children the sound ‘eh,’ when pointing to an object. We may conclude then that there are spontaneous vocal reactions expressive of the contrasting mental states answering to the appearance or arrival and the disappearance or departure of an impressive and interesting object, and that, further, these reactions when recognised by others tend to become fixed as linguistic signs.[64]

Footnote 64:

See Preyer, _op. cit._, pp. 353, 390, 391.

Just as in the case of the gesture-movements, sniffing, kissing, so in that of expressive vocal sounds we may see a tendency to take on the function of true signs of ideas. One of the best illustrations of this is to be found in the invention of a word-sound for things to eat. I have pointed out that the state of hunger with its characteristic misery becomes at an early stage marked off by a distinctive expressive sign. At a later stage this or some other sound comes to be used intelligently as a means of _asking_ for food. Darwin’s boy employed the sound _mum_ in this way; another English child used ‘numby,’ and yet another ‘nini’; a French child observed by M. Taine made use of ‘ham’. The predominance of the labial _m_ shows the early formation of these quasi-linguistic signs, and suggests that they were developed out of the primary instinctive ‘_m_’ sound.[65] Such sounds, coming to be understood by the nurse, tend to become fixed as modes of asking for food.

Footnote 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.

It seems but a step from the demand ‘Give me food’ to the pointing out or naming of things as food. And so good an observer as Darwin says that his boy used the sound ‘mum’ not only for conveying the demand or command ‘Give me food,’ but also as a substantive ‘food’ of wide application. He later went on to erect a rudimentary classification on the basis of this substantive, calling sugar ‘shu-mum’ and even breaking up this subdivision by calling liquorice “black shu-mum”.[66] This however seems, so far as I can ascertain, to be exceptional. In most vocabularies of children of two or three no generic term for food is found, though names for particular kinds of food, _e.g._, milk, bread, are in use. This agrees with the general order of development of thought-signs, the names of easily distinguished species appearing in the case of the individual as in that of the race before those of comprehensive and ‘abstract’ genera such as ‘food’. It is probable, therefore, that these early signs for food are but imperfectly developed into true thought-symbols or names. They retain much of their primordial character as expressions of desire and possibly of the volitional state answering to a command. This is borne out by the fact that the child spoken of by Taine used the sound ‘tem’ as a sort of general imperative for ‘give!’ ‘take!’ ‘look!’ etc.[67]

Footnote 66:

See _Mind_, vol. ii., p. 293.

Footnote 67:

See _Mind_, vol. ii., p. 255.

Another early example of an emotional expression passing into a germinal sign is that called forth at the sight of moving creatures. This acts as a strong stimulus to the baby brain, and vigorous muscular reactions, vocal and other, are wont to appear. One little boy of twelve and three-quarter months usually expressed his excitement by the sound “Dō-boo-boo,” which was used regularly for about ten days on the appearance of a dog, a horse, a bird, and so forth. Here we have a protoplasmic condition of the lingual organism which we call a name, a condition destined never to pass into another and higher. Sometimes, however, these explosives at the sight of animal life grow into comparatively fixed signs of recognition.

In this spontaneous invention of quasi-linguistic sounds imitation plays a considerable part. It is evident, indeed, that gestures are largely imitative. Thus the sniff and the mimic kiss referred to just now are plainly imitations of movements. The pointing gesture, too, may be said to be a kind of imitation of the reaching and appropriating movement of the arm. The sound ‘dō-boo-boo’ used on seeing an animal was probably imitative. According to Preyer the sounds called forth by the sight of moving objects, _e.g._, rolling balls and wheels, are imitative.[68] Whether the signs of hunger, ‘mum,’ ‘numby,’ are due to modifications of the movements carried out in sucking, seems to be more problematic.[69]

Footnote 68:

_Op. cit._, p. 358.

Footnote 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.

In certain cases imitation is the one sufficient source of the sound. In what are called onomatopoetic sounds the child seeks to mimic some natural sound, and such imitation is capable of becoming a fruitful source of original linguistic invention. A boy between nine and ten months imitated the sound of young roosters by drawing in his breath, and this noise became for a time a kind of name for any feathered creature, including small birds. More commonly such onomatopoetic sounds come to be distinctive recognition-signs of particular classes of animals, such as ‘oua-oua’ or ‘bow-wow’ for the dog, ‘moo-moo’ for the cow, ‘ouack-ouack’ or ‘kuack’ for the duck, and so forth.

It may, of course, be said that these mimic sounds are in part learnt from the traditional vocabulary of the nursery, in which the nurse takes good care to instruct the child. But it is to be remembered that the traditional nursery language itself is largely an adoption of children’s own sounds. There is, moreover, ample independent evidence to show that children are zealous and indefatigable imitators of the sounds they hear as of the movements they see. Towards the end of the first six months and during the second half-year a child is apt to imitate eagerly any sound you choose to produce before him. In the case of Preyer’s boy this impulse to repeat the sounds he heard developed into a kind of echoing mania. The acquisition of others’ language plainly depends on the existence and the vigour of this mimetic impulse. And this same impulse leads the child beyond the servile adoption of our conventional sounds to the invention of new or onomatopoetic sounds. Thus one little child discovered the pretty sound ‘tin-tin’ as a name for the bell. Another child, a girl, quite unprompted, used a chirping sound for a bird, and a curious clicking noise on seeing the picture of a horse (no doubt in imitation of the sound of a horse’s hoofs); while a little boy used a faint whistle to indicate a bird, and the sound ‘click-click’ to denote a horse. In some cases a grown-up person’s imitation of a sound is imitated. Thus a child of about two used the sound ‘afta’ as a name for drinking, and also for drinking-vessel, “in imitation of the sound of sucking in air which the nurse used to make when _pretending to drink_”.[70]

Footnote 70:

Quoted by Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, p. 143.

In these two sources of original child-language, expression of states of feeling, desire, etc., and imitation, we have the two commonly assigned origins of human language. Into the difficult question how man first came to the use of language-sounds I do not propose to enter here. Whatever view may be taken with respect to the first beginnings of human speech, there seems little doubt that both expressive cries and imitations of natural sounds have had their place. To this extent, then, we may say that there is a parallelism between the early evolution of language in the case of the individual and in that of the race. Not only so, it may be said that our study of these tentatives of the child in language-formation tends to confirm the conclusions of philology and anthropology that the current of human speech did probably originate, in main part at least, by way of these two tributaries.[71]

Footnote 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.

While vocal sounds which are clearly traceable to emotional expressions or to imitations form the staple of the normal child’s inventions they do not exhaust them. Some of these early self-prompted linguistic sounds cannot be readily explained. I find, for example, that children are apt to invent names for their nurses and sometimes for themselves which, so far as I can ascertain, bear no discoverable resemblance to the sounds used by others. Thus the same little girl that invented ‘numby’ for food and ‘afta’ for drinking called her nurse ‘Lee’ though no one else called her by any other name than ‘nurse’. It is difficult to suppose that the child was transforming the sound ‘nurse’ in this case. Preyer’s boy called his nurse, whom others addressed as Marie, ‘Wolá,’ which Preyer explains rather forcedly as deriving by inversion from the frequently heard ‘Ja wohl!’ A lady friend informs me that her little boy when thirteen months old called himself ‘Bla-a,’ though he was always addressed by others as Jeffrey, and that he stuck to ‘Bla-a’ for six months.[72] A germ of imitation is doubtless recognisable here in the preservation of the syllabic form or structure (that of monosyllable or dissyllable). Yet the amount of transformation is, to say the least, surprising in children, who show themselves capable of fairly close imitation. Possibly a child’s ear notes analogies of sound which escape our more sophisticated organ. However this be, the fact of such origination of names (other than those clearly onomatopoetic) is noteworthy.

Footnote 72:

His brother when one year old called his nurse, whose real name was Maud, Bur, which was probably a rough rendering of ‘nurse’.

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]

Footnote 73:

For a summary of Professor Hale’s researches see Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, p. 138 ff.

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]

Footnote 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.

_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]

Footnote 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.

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.

Footnote 76:

Tracy, _The Psychology of Childhood_, p. 71.

_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]

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

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]

Footnote 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.

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_.

Footnote 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.

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.