Part 15

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]

Footnote 93:

Quoted by Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, p. 283.

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]

Footnote 94:

_Logic_ (University Extension Manuals), pp. 83-84.

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.

Footnote 95:

See _op. cit._, p. 420, also pp. 414 and 418.

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]

Footnote 96:

Paola Lombroso, _Saggi di Psicologia del Bambino_, p. 16.

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]

Footnote 97:

See Trench’s account of poetry in words, _On the Study of Words_, lect. vi.

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]

Footnote 98:

Tylor, _Anthropology_, chap. v.

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]

Footnote 99:

Compayré, _op. cit._, p. 249, where other examples are given.

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.

Footnote 100:

_Op. cit._, p. 12.

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]

Footnote 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.

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.

Footnote 102:

See Preyer, _op. cit._, p. 361; Romanes, _op. cit._, p. 296 ff.

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.

Footnote 103:

See Compayré, _op. cit._, p. 206.

Footnote 104:

_Notes on the Development of a Child_, p. 84.

Footnote 105:

Canton, _The Invisible Playmate_, p. 32, who adds that this exactly answers to the form, “Good my lord!”

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.

Footnote 106:

See Romanes, _op. cit._, p. 116 f., where other examples may be found.