Chapter 3

LEARNING TO SPEAK.

No human being remembers how he learned his mother-tongue in early youth, and the whole human race has forgotten the origin of its articulate speech as well as of its gestures; but every individual passes perceptibly through the stage of learning to speak, so that a patient observer recognizes much as conformable to law.

The acquisition of speech belongs to those physiological problems which can not be solved by the most important means possessed by physiology, vivisection. And the speechless condition in which every human being is born can not be regarded as a disease that may be healed by instruction, as is the case with certain forms of acquired aphasia. A set of other accomplishments, such as swimming, riding, fencing, piano-playing, the acquirement of which is physiological, are learned like articulate speech, and nobody calls the person that can not swim an anomaly on that account. The _inability to appropriate_ to one's self these and other co-ordinated muscular movements, this alone is abnormal. But we can not tell in advance in the case of any new-born child whether he will learn to speak or not, just as in the case of one who has suffered an obstruction of speech or has entirely lost speech, it is not certain whether he will ever recover it.

In this the normal child that does _not yet_ speak perfectly, resembles the diseased adult who, for any cause, _no longer_ has command of language. And to compare these two with each other is the more important, as at present no other empirical way is open to us for investigating the nature of the process of learning to speak; but this way conducts us, fortunately, through pathology, to solid, important physiological conclusions.

1. Disturbances of Speech in Adults.

The command of language comprises, on the one hand, the understanding of what is spoken; on the other hand, the utterance of what is thought. It is at the height of its performance in free, intelligible, connected speech. Everything that disturbs the _understanding of words heard_ must be designated disturbance of speech equally with everything that disturbs _the production of words_ and sentences.

By means of excellent investigations made by many persons, especially by Broca, Wernicke, Kussmaul, it has become possible to make a topical division of most of the observed disturbances of speech of both kinds. In the first class, which comprises the _impressive_ processes, we have to consider every functional disturbance of the peripheral ear, of the auditory nerve and of the central ends of the auditory nerve; in the second class, viz., the _expressive_ processes, we consider every functional disturbance of the apparatus required for articulation, including the nerves belonging to this in their whole extent, in particular the hypoglossus, as motor nerve of the tongue, and certain parts of the cerebral hemispheres from which the nerves of speech are excited and to which the sense-impressions from without are so conducted by connecting fibers that they themselves or their memory-images can call forth expressive, i. e., motor processes. The diagram, Fig. 1, illustrates the matter.

The peripheral ear _o_, with the terminations of the auditory nerve, is by means of sensory fibers _a_, that are connected with the auditory nerve, in connection with the storehouse of sound-impressions, K. This is connected by means of the intercentral paths _v_ with the motor speech-center M. From it go out special fibers of communication, _h_, to the motor nerves of speech which terminate in the external instruments of articulation, _z_.

The impressive nerve-path, _o_ _a_ K, is centripetal; the expressive, M _h_ _z_, centrifugal; _v_, intercentral.

When the normal child learns to speak, _o_ receives the sound-impressions; by _a_ the acoustic-nerve excitations are passed along to K, and are here stored up, every distinctly heard sound (a tone, a syllable, a word) leaving an impression behind in K. It is very remarkable here that, among the many sounds and noises that impress themselves upon the portions of the brain directly connected with the auditory nerve, a selection is made in the sound-field of speech, K, since all those impressions that can be reproduced, among them all the acoustic images necessary for speech, are preserved, but many others are not, e. g., thunder, crackling. Memory is indistinct with regard to these. From K, when the sound-images or sound-impressions have become sufficiently strong and numerous, the nerve-excitement goes farther through the connecting paths _v_ to M, where it liberates motor impulses, and through _h_ sets in activity the peripheral apparatus of speech, _z_.

Now, speech is disturbed when at any point the path _o_ _z_ is interrupted, or the excitation conducted along the nerve-fibers and ganglionic cells upon the hearing of something spoken or upon the speaking of something represented in idea (heard inwardly) is arrested, a thing which may be effected without a total interruption of the conduction, e. g., by means of poison and through anatomical lesions.

On the basis of these physiological relations, about which there is no doubt, I divide, then, all pure disturbances of speech, or _lalopathies_, into three classes:

(1) Periphero-Impressive or Perceptive Disturbances.

The organ of hearing is injured _at its peripheral extremity_, or else the acusticus in its course; then occurs _difficulty of hearing_ or _deafness_. What is spoken is not correctly heard or not heard at all: the utterance is correct only in case the lesion happened late. If it is inborn, then this lack of speech, alalia, is called _deaf-mutism_, although the so-called deaf and dumb are not in reality dumb, but only deaf. If words spoken are incorrectly heard on account of acquired defects of the peripheral ear, the patient mis-hears, and the abnormal condition is called paracusis.

(2) Central Disturbances.

_a._ The higher impressive central paths are disturbed: _centro-sensory dysphasia and aphasia_, or _word-deafness_. Words are heard but not understood. The hearing is acute. "Patients may have perfectly correct ideas, but they lack the correct expression for them; not the thoughts but the words are confused. They would understand the ideas of others also if they only understood the words. They are in the position of persons suddenly transported into the midst of a people using the same sounds but different words, which strike upon their ear like an unintelligible noise." (Kussmaul.) Their articulation is without defect, but what they say is unintelligible because the words are mutilated and used wrongly. C. Wernicke discovered this form, and has separated it sharply from other disturbances of speech. He designated it sensory aphasia. Kussmaul later named this abnormal condition word-deafness (surditas verbalis).

_b._ The connections between the impressive sound-centers and the motor speech-center are injured. Then we have intercentral conductive dysphasia and aphasia. What is spoken is heard and understood correctly even when _v_ is completely interrupted. The articulation is not disturbed, and yet the patient utters no word of himself. He can, however, read aloud what is written. (Kussmaul.) The word that has just been read aloud by the patient can not be repeated by him, neither can the word that has been pronounced to him; and, notwithstanding this, he reads aloud with perfect correctness. In this case, then, it is impossible for the patient of his own motion, even if the memory of the words heard were not lost, to set in activity the expressive mechanism of speech, although it might remain uninjured.

_c._ The motor speech-center is injured. Then we have centro-motor dysphasia and aphasia. If the center is completely and exclusively disturbed, then it is a case of pure ataxic aphasia. Spontaneous speaking, saying over of words said by another, and reading aloud of writing, are impossible. (Kussmaul.) On the other hand, words heard are understood, although the concepts belonging with them can not be expressed aloud. The verbal memory remains; and the patient can still express his thoughts in writing and can copy in writing what he reads or what is dictated to him.

(3) Periphero-Expressive or Articulatory Disturbances.

The centrifugal paths from the motor speech-center to the motor nerves of speech and to their extremities, or else these nerves themselves, are injured. Then occurs _dysarthria_, and, if the path is totally impassable at any place, _anarthria_. The hearing and understanding of words are not hindered, but speaking, repeating the words of others, and reading aloud are, as in the last case (2, _c_), impossible. In general this form can not be distinguished from the foregoing when both are developed in an extreme degree, except in cases of peripheral dysarthria, i. e., dyslalia, since, as may be easily understood, it makes no difference in the resulting phenomena whether the motor center itself is extirpated or its connections with the motor outlet are absolutely cut off just where the latter begins; but if this latter is injured nearer to the periphery, e. g., if the hypoglossus is paralyzed, then the phenomena are different (paralalia, mogilalia). Here belongs all so-called mechanical dyslalia, caused by defects of the peripheral speech-apparatus.

Of these five forms each occurs generally only in connection with another; for this reason the topical diagnosis also is often extraordinarily difficult. But enough cases have been accurately observed and collected to put it almost beyond a doubt that each form may also appear for a short time purely by itself. To be sure, the anatomical localization of the impressive and expressive paths is not yet ascertained, so that for the present the centripetal roads from the acusticus to the motor speech-center, and the intercentral fibers that run to the higher centers, are as much unknown as the centrifugal paths leading from them to the nuclei of the hypoglossus; but that the speech-center discovered by Broca is situated in the posterior portion of the third frontal convolution (in right-handed men on the left, in left-handed on the right) is universally acknowledged.

Further, it results from the abundance of clinical material, that the acoustic-center K must be divided into a sound-center L, a syllable-center S, a word-center W, each of which may be in itself defective, for cases have been observed in which sounds were still recognized and reproduced, but not syllables and words, also cases in which sounds and syllables could be dealt with but no words; and, finally, cases in which all these were wanting. The original diagram is thereby considerably complicated, as the simple path of connection between K and M has added to it the arcs L S M and L S W M (Fig. 2).

The surest test of the perfect condition of all the segments is afforded by the repetition of sounds, syllables, and words pronounced by others.

Syllables and sounds, but no words, can be pronounced if W is missing or the path S W or W M is interrupted; no syllables if S is missing or L S or S M is interrupted. If L is missing, then nothing can be repeated from hearing. If L M is interrupted, then syllables and words are more easily repeated than simple sounds, so far as the latter are not syllables. If L S is interrupted, then simple sounds only can be repeated. All these abnormal states have been actually observed. The proofs are to be found in Kussmaul's classic work on the disturbances of speech (1877). Even the strange case appears in which, L M being impracticable, syllables are more easily repeated than simple sounds.

If _a_ is interrupted before the acquirement of speech, and thus chronic deafness is present in very early childhood, articulation may still be learned through visual and tactile impressions; but in this case the sound-center L is not developed. Another, a sound-touch-center, comes in its place in deaf-mutes when they are instructed, chiefly through the tactile sensations of the tongue; and, when they are instructed in reading (and writing), a sound-sight-(or letter) center. This last is, on the contrary, wanting to those born blind; and both are wanting to those born blind and deaf. Instead is formed in them through careful instruction, by means of the tactile sensations of the finger-tips, a center for signs of sound that are known by touch (as with the printed text for the blind).

Accordingly, the eye and ear are not absolutely indispensable to the acquirement of a verbal language; but for the thorough learning of the verbal language in its entire significance both are by all means indispensable. For, the person born blind does not get the significance of words pertaining to light and color. For him, therefore, a large class of conceptions, an extensive portion of the vocabulary of his language, remains empty sound. To the one born deaf there is likewise an extensive district of conceptions closed, inasmuch as all words pertaining to tone and noise remain unintelligible to him.

Moreover, those born blind and deaf, or those born blind and becoming deaf very early, or those born deaf and becoming blind very early, though they may possess ever so good intelligence, and perhaps even learn to write letters, as did the famous Laura Bridgman, will invariably understand only a small part of the vocabulary of their language, and will not articulate correctly.

Those born deaf are precisely the ones that show plainly how necessary hearing is for the acquirement of perfectly articulate speech. One who is deaf from birth does not even learn to speak half a dozen sounds correctly without assistance, and the loss of speech that regularly follows deafness coming on in children who have already learned to speak, shows how inseparably the learning and the development of perfect articulation are bound up with the hearing. Even the deafness that comes on in maturer years injures essentially the agreeable tone, often also the intelligibility, of the utterance.

2. The Organic Conditions of Learning to Speak.

How is it, now, with the normal child, who is learning to speak? How is it as to the existence and practicability of the nervous conduction, and the genesis of the centers?

In order to decide these questions, a further extension of the diagram is necessary (Fig. 3).

For the last diagram deals only with the hearing and pronouncing of sounds, syllables, and single words, not with the grammatical formation and syntactical grouping of these; there must further be a center of higher rank, the _dictorium_, or center of diction (Kussmaul), brought into connection with the centers L S and W. And, on the one hand, the word-image acquired (by hearing) must be at the disposition of the diction-center, an excitation, therefore, passing from W to D (through _m_); on the other hand, an impulse must go out from the diction-center to pronounce the word that is formed and placed so as to correspond to the sense (through _n_). The same is true for syllables and sounds, whose paths to and from are indicated by _k_ and _l_, as well as by _g_ and _i_. These paths of connection must be of twofold sort. The excitement can not pass off to the diction-center D on the same anatomical path as the return impulse from D, because not a single case is known of a nerve-fiber that in natural relations conducts both centrifugally _and_ centripetally, although this possibility of double conduction does occur under artificial circumstances. Apart, then, from pathological experience, which seems to be in favor of it, the separation of the two directions of the excitement seems to be justified anatomically also. On the contrary, it is questionable whether the impulse proceeding from D does not arrive directly at the motor speech-center, instead of passing through W, S, or L. The diagram then represents it as follows (Fig. 4). Here the paths of direct connection _i_, _l_, and _n_ from D to M represent that which was just now represented by _i_ L _d_ and _l_ S _e_ and _n_ W _f_, respectively; in Fig. 4, _i_ conducts only sound-excitations coming from L, _l_ only excitations coming from S, and _n_ only those coming from W, as impulses for M. For the present, I see no way of deciding between the two possibilities. They may even exist both together. All the following statements concerning the localization of the disturbances of speech and the parallel imperfections of child-speech apply indifferently to either figure; it should be borne in mind that the nerve-excitement always goes _only_ in the direction of the arrows, never in the opposite direction, through the nervous path corresponding to them. Such a parallel is not only presented, as I have found, and as I will show in what follows, by the most superficial exhibition of the manifold deviations of child-speech from the later perfect speech, but is, above all, necessary for the answering of the question: what is the condition of things in learning to speak?

3. Parallel between the Disturbances of Speech in Adults and the Imperfections of Speech in the Child.

In undertaking to draw such a parallel, I must first of all state that in regard to the pathology of the subject, I have not much experience of my own, and therefore I rely here upon Kussmaul's comprehensive work on speech-disturbances, from which are taken most of the data that serve to characterize the individual deviations from the rule. In that work also may be found the explanations, or precise definitions, of almost all the names--with the exception of the following, added here for the sake of brevity--skoliophasia, skoliophrasia, and palimphrasia. On the other hand, the statements concerning the speech of the child rest on my own observations of children--especially of my own son--and readers who give their attention to little children may verify them all; most of them, indeed, with ease. Only the examples added for explaining mogilalia and paralalia are taken in part from Sigismund, a few others from Vierordt. They show more plainly (at least concerning rhotacism) than my own notes, some imperfections of articulation of the child in the second year, which occur, however, only in single individuals. In general the defects of child-speech are found to be very unequally distributed among different ages and individuals, so that we can hardly expect to find all the speech-disturbances of adults manifested in typical fashion in one and the same child. But with very careful observation it may be done, notwithstanding; and when several children are compared with one another in this respect, the analogies fairly force themselves upon the observer, and there is no break anywhere.

The whole group into which I have tried to bring in organic connection all the kinds of disturbances and defects of speech in systematic form falls into three divisions:

1. Imperfections not occasioned by disturbance of the intelligence--pure speech-disturbances or _lalopathies_.

2. Imperfections occasioned solely by disturbances of the intelligence--disturbances of continuous speech or discourse (Rede)--_dysphrasies_.

3. Imperfections of the language of gesture and feature--_dysmimies_.

I. LALOPATHY.

A. THE IMPRESSIVE PERIPHERAL PROCESSES DISTURBED.

_Deafness._--Persons able to speak but who have become deaf do not understand what is spoken simply because they can _no longer_ hear. The newly born do not understand what is spoken because they can _not yet_ hear. The paths _o_ and _a_ are not yet practicable. All those just born are deaf and dumb.

_Difficulty of Hearing._--Persons who have become hard of hearing do not understand what is spoken, or they misunderstand, because they _no longer_ hear distinctly. Such individuals easily hear wrong (paracusis).

Very young infants do not understand what is spoken, for the reason that they do _not yet_ hear distinctly; _o_ and _a_ are still difficult for the acoustic nerve-excitement to traverse. Little children very easily hear wrong on this account.

B. THE CENTRAL PROCESSES DISTURBED.

_Dysphasia._--In the child that can use only a small number of words, the cerebral and psychical act through which he connects these with his ideas and gives them grammatical form and syntactical construction in order to express the movement of his thought is _not yet_ complete.

(1) The Sensory Processes centrally disturbed.

_Sensory Aphasia_ (Wernicke), _Word-Deafness_ (Kussmaul).--The child, in spite of good hearing and sufficiently developed intelligence, can _not yet_ understand spoken words because the path _m_ is not yet formed and the storehouse of word images W is still empty or is just in the stage of origination.

_Amnesia, Amnesic Dysphasia and Aphasia, Partial and Total Word-Amnesia, Memory-Aphasia._--The child has as yet no word-memory, or only a weak one, utters meaningless sounds and sound-combinations. He can _not yet_ use words because he does not yet have them at his disposal as acoustic sound-combinations. In this stage, however, much that is said to him can be repeated correctly in case W is passable, though empty or imperfectly developed.

(2) The Sensori-motor Processes of Diction disturbed.

_Acataphasia_ (Steinthal).--The child that has already a considerable number of words at his disposal is _not yet_ in condition to arrange them in a sentence syntactically. He can _not yet_ frame correct sentences to express the movement of his thought, because his diction-center D is still imperfectly developed. He expresses a whole sentence by a word; e. g., _hot!_ means as much as "The milk is too hot for me to drink," and then again it may mean "The stove is too hot!" _Man!_ means "A strange man has come!"

_Dysgrammatism_ (Kussmaul) _and Agrammatism_ (Steinthal).--Children can _not yet_ put words into correct grammatical form, decline, or conjugate. They like to use the indefinite noun-substantive and the infinitive, likewise to some extent the past participle. They prefer the weak inflection, ignore and confound the articles, conjunctions, auxiliaries, prepositions, and pronouns. In place of "I" they say their own names, also _tint_ (for "Kind"--child or "baby"). Instead of "Du, er, Sie" (thou, he, you), they use proper names, or man, papa, mamma. Sometimes, too, the adjectives are placed after the nouns, and the meaning of words is indicated by their position with reference to others, by the intonation, by looks and gestures. Agrammatism in child-language always appears in company with acataphasia, often also in insane persons. When the imbecile Tony says, "Tony flowers taken, attendant come, Tony whipped" (Tony Blumen genommen, Waerterin gekommen, Tony gehaut), she speaks exactly like a child (Kussmaul), without articles, pronouns, or auxiliary verbs, and, like the child, uses the weak inflection. The connection _m_ of the word-image-center W with the diction-center D, i. e., of the word-memory with grammar, and the centers themselves, are as yet very imperfectly developed, unused.

_Bradyphasia._--Children that can already frame sentences take a surprising amount of time in speaking on account of the slowness of their diction. In D and W _m_ in the cerebral cortex the hindrances are still great because of too slight practice.

(3) The Motor Processes centrally disturbed.

_a. Centro-motor Dysphasia and Aphasia, Aphemia, Asymbolia, Asemia._--Children have not yet learned, or have hardly learned, the use of language, although their intelligence is already sufficient. There is no longer any deficiency in the development of the external organs of speech, no muscular weakness, no imperfection of the nervous structures that effect the articulation of the separate sounds, for intelligence shows itself in the child's actions; he forms the separate sounds correctly, unintentionally; his hearing is good and the sensory word-memory is present, since the child already obeys. His _not yet_ speaking at this period (commonly as late as the second year) must accordingly be essentially of centro-motor character.

In the various forms of this condition there is injury or lack of sufficient relative development either in the centro-motorium M or in the paths that lead into it, _d_, _e_, _f_ as well as _i_, _l_, _n_.

_[alpha]. Central Dysarthria and Anarthria._--In the child at the stage of development just indicated articulation is _not yet_ perfect, inasmuch as while he often unintentionally pronounces correctly sounds, syllables, and single words, yet he can not form these intentionally, although he hears and understands them aright. He makes use of gestures.

_Ataxic Aphasia (Verbal Anarthria)._--The child that already understands several words as sound-combinations and retains them (since he obeys), can not yet use these in speech because he has not yet the requisite centro-motor impulses. He forms correctly the few syllables he has already learned of his future language, i. e., those he has at the time in memory as sound-combinations (sensory), but can _not yet_ group them into new words; e. g., he says _bi_ and _te_ correctly, learns also to say "_bitte_," but not yet at this period "tibe," "tebi." He lacks still the motor co-ordination of words.

At this period the gesture-language and modulation of voice of the child are generally easy to understand, as in case of pure ataxic aphasia (the verbal asemia or asymbolia of Finkelnburg) are the looks and gestures of aphasic adults. Chiefly _n_, _f_, and M are as yet imperfectly developed.

_Central Stammering and Lisping (Literal Dysarthria)._--Children just beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly. They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the persons most intimately associated with them.

The paths _d_ and _i_, and consequently the centro-motorium M, come chiefly into consideration here; but L also is concerned, so far as from it comes the motor impulse to make a sound audible through M.

The babbling of the infant is not to be confounded with this. That imports merely the unintentional production of single disconnected articulate sounds with non-cooerdinated movements of the tongue on account of uncontrolled excitement of the nerves of the tongue.

_Stuttering (Syllabic Dysarthria)._--Stutterers articulate each separate sound correctly, but connect the consonants, especially the explosive sounds, with the succeeding vowels badly, with effort as if an obstacle were to be overcome. The paths _i_ and _l_ are affected, and hence M is not properly excited. S, too, comes under consideration in the case of stuttering, so far as impulses go out from it for the pronunciation of the syllables.

Children who can not yet speak of themselves but can repeat what is said for them, exert themselves unnecessarily, making a strong expiratory effort (with the help of abdominal pressure) to repeat a syllable still unfamiliar, and they pause between the doubled or tripled consonant and vowel. This peculiarity, which soon passes away and is to be traced often to the lack of practice and to embarrassment (in case of threats), and which may be observed _occasionally_ in every child, is stuttering proper, although it appears more seldom than in stutterers. Example: The child of two years is to say "Tischdecke," and he begins with an unnecessary expiratory effort, _T-t-itt-t_, and does not finish.

Stuttering is by no means a physiological transition-stage through which every child learning to speak must necessarily pass. But it is easily acquired, in learning to speak, by imitation of stutterers, in frequent intercourse with them. Hence, stutterers have sometimes stuttering children.

_[beta]. Stumbling at Syllables._--Children that already articulate correctly separate sounds, and do so intentionally, very often put together syllables out of the sounds incorrectly, and frame words incorrectly from the syllables, where we can not assume deficient development of the external organs of speech; this is solely because the co-ordination is still imperfect. The child accordingly says _beti_ before he can say _bitte_; so too _grefessen_ instead of _gefressen_.

The tracts _l_ and _n_ are still incompletely developed; also S and W, so far as impulses come thence to utter syllables by means of M.

_b. Paraphasia._--Children have learned some expressions in their future language, and use them independently but wrongly; they put in the place of the appropriate word an incorrect one, confounding words because they can _not yet_ correctly combine their ideas with the word-images. They say, e. g., _Kind_ instead of "Kinn," and _Sand_ instead of "Salz"; also _Netz_ for "Nest" and _Billard_ for "Billet," _Matrone_ for "Patrone."

The connection of D with M through _n_ is still imperfect, and perhaps also M is not sufficiently developed.

_Making Mistakes in Speaking (Skoliophasia)._--In this kind of paraphasia in adults the cause is a lack of attention; therefore purely central concentration is wanting, or one fails to "collect himself"; there is distraction, hence the unintentional, frequently unconscious, confounding of words similar in sound or connected merely by remote, often dim, reminiscences. This kind of mis-speaking through carelessness is distinguished from skoliophrasia (see below) by the fact that there is no disturbance of the intelligence, and the correction easily follows.

Skoliophasia occurs regularly with children in the second and third years (and later). The child in general has not yet the ability to concentrate his attention upon that which is to be spoken. He _wills_ to do it but _can_ not yet. Hence, even in spite of the greatest effort, occur often erroneous repetitions of words pronounced for him (aside from difficulties of articulation, and also when these are wanting); hence confounding (of words), wrong forms of address, e. g., _Mama_ or _Helene_ instead of "Papa," and _Papa_ instead of "Marie."

_c. Taciturnity (Dumbness)._--Individual human beings of sound physical condition who can speak very well are dumb, or speak only two or three words in all for several years, because they no longer _will_ to speak (e. g., in the belief that silence prevents them from doing wrong).

This taciturnity is not to be confounded with the paranoic aphrasia in certain insane persons--e. g., in catatonia, where the will is paralyzed.

It also occurs--seldom, however--that children who have already learned to speak pretty well are dumb, or speak only a few words--among these the word _no_--during several months, or speak only with certain persons, because they _will not_ speak (out of obstinacy, or embarrassment). Here an organic obstacle in the motor speech-center is probable. For voluntary dumbness requires great strength of will, which is hardly to be attributed to the child. The unwillingness to speak that is prompted by _fun_ never lasts long.

C. THE EXPRESSIVE PERIPHERAL PROCESSES DISTURBED.

(1) Dyslalia and Alalia (Peripheral Dysarthria and Anarthria).

The infant can _not yet_ articulate correctly, or at all, on account of the still deficient development, and afterward the lack of control, of the nerves of speech and the external organs of speech. The complete inability to articulate is called alalia. The newly born is alalic. Dyslalia continues with many children a long time even after the learning of the mother-tongue. This is always a case simply of imperfections in _h_ and _z_.

_a. Bulbo-nuclear Stammering (Literal Bulbo-nuclear Dysarthria and Anarthria)._--Patients who have lost control over the muscles of speech through bulbo-nuclear paralysis, stammer before they become speechless, and along with paralysis and atrophy of the tongue occur regularly fibrillar contractions of the muscles of the tongue. The tongue is _no longer_ regulated by the will.

The child that has not yet gained control over his vocal muscles stammers before he can speak correctly, and, according to my observations, regularly shows fibrillar contractions of the muscles of the tongue along with an extraordinary mobility of the tongue. The tongue is _not yet_ regulated by the will. Its movements are aimless.

_b. Mogilalia._--Children, on account of the as yet deficient control of the external organs of speech, especially of the tongue, can _not yet_ form some sounds, and therefore omit them. They say, e. g., _in_ for "hin," _aetz_ for "Herz," _eitun_ for "Zeitung," _ere_ for "Schere."

_Gammacism._--Children find difficulties in the voluntary utterance of K and Ks (_x_), and indeed of G, and therefore often omit these sounds without substituting others; they say, e. g., _atsen_ for "Klatschen," _atten_ for "Garten," _asse_ for "Gasse," _all_ for "Karl," _ete_ for "Grete" (in the second year), _wesen_ for "gewesen," _opf_ for "Kopf."

_Sigmatism._--All children are late in learning to pronounce correctly S, and generally still later with Sch, and therefore omit both, or in a lisping fashion put S in place of Sch; more rarely Sch in place of S. They say, e. g., _saf._ in place of "Schaf," _int_ for "singt," _anz_ for "Salz," _lafen_ and _slafen_ for "schlafen," _iss_ for "Hirsch," _pitte_ for "Splitter," _tul_ for "Stuhl," _wein_ for "Schwein," _Tuttav_ for "Gustav," _torch_ for "Storch" (second year), _emele_ for "Schemel," _webenau_ for "Fledermaus," but also _Kusch_ for "Kuss." But in no case have I myself heard a child regularly put "sch" in place of _s_, as _Joschef_ for "Josef." This form, perhaps, occurs in Jewish families; but I have no further observations concerning it as yet.

_Rhotacism._--Many children do not form R at all for a long time and put nothing in place of it. They say _duch_ for "durch," _bot_ for "Brot," _unte_ for "herunter," _tautech_ for "traurig," _ule_ for "Ruhe," _taenen_ for "Thraenen," _ukka_ for "Zucker." On the contrary, some form early the R lingual, guttural, and labial, but all confound now and then the first two with each other.

_Lambdacism._--Many children are late in learning to utter L, and often omit it. They say, e. g., _icht_ for "Licht," _voge_ for "Vogel," _atenne_ for "Laterne," _batn_ for "Blatt," _mante_ for "Mantel."

(2) Literal Pararthria or Paralalia.

Children who are beginning to repeat intentionally what is said, often put another sound in place of the well-known correct (no doubt intended) one; this on account of deficient control of the tongue or other peripheral organs of speech. E. g., they say _t_ in place of _p_, or _b_ for _w_ (_basse_ for "Wasser" and for "Flasche"), _e_ for _i_ and _o_ for _u_, as in _bete_ for "bitte," and _Ohr_ for "Uhr."

_Paragammacism._--Children supply the place of the insuperably difficult sounds G, K, X by others, especially D and T, also N, saying, e. g., _itte_ for "Rike," _finne_ for "Finger," _tein_ for "Klein," _toss_ for "gross," _atitte_ for "Karnickel," _otute_ for "Kuk," _attall_ for "Axel," _wodal_ for "Vogel," _tut_ for "gut," _tatze_ for "Katze."

_Parasigmatism._--Children are late in learning to utter S and Sch correctly. They often supply the place of them, before acquiring them, by other sounds, saying, e. g., _tule_ for "Schule," _ade_ for "Hase," _webbe_ for "Wasser," _beb_ for "boes," _bebe_ for "Besen," _gigod_ for "Schildkroete," _baubee_ for "Schwalbe."

_Pararhotacism._--Most children, if not all, even when they have very early formed R correctly (involuntarily), introduce other sounds in place of it in speaking--e. g., they say _moigjen_ for "morgen," _matta_ for "Martha," _annold_ for "Arnold," _jeiben_ for "reiben," _amum_ for "warum," _welfen_ for "werfen."

_Paralambdacism._--Many children who do not learn until late to utter L put in its place other sounds; saying, e. g., _bind_ for "Bild," _bampe_ for "Lampe," _tinne_ for "stille," _degen_ for "legen," _wewe_ for "Loewe," _ewebau_ for "Elephant."

(3) Bradylalia or Bradyarthria.

Children reciting for the first time something learned by heart speak not always indistinctly, but, on account of the incomplete practicability of the motor-paths, slowly, monotonously, without modulation. Sounds and syllables do _not yet_ follow one another quickly, although they are already formed correctly. The syllables belonging to a word are often separated by pauses like the words themselves--a sort of dysphasia-of-conduction on account of the more difficult and prolonged conduction of the motor-impulse. I knew a boy (feeble-minded, to be sure) who took from three to eight seconds for answering even the simplest question; then came a regular explosion of utterance. Yet he did not stutter or stammer. When he had only _yes_ or _no_ to answer, the interval between question and answer was shorter.

Here belong in part also the imperfections of speech that are occasioned by too large a tongue (macroglossia). When a child is born with too large a tongue, he may remain long alalic, without the loss of intellectual development, as was observed to be the case by Paster and O. von Heusinger (1882).

II. DYSPHRASIA (DYSLOGICAL DISTURBANCES OF SPEECH).

The child that can already speak pretty correctly deforms his speech after the manner of insane persons, being moved by strange caprices, because his understanding is not yet sufficiently developed.

_Logorrhoea_ (_Loquaciousness_).--It is a regular occurrence with children that their pleasure in articulation and in vocal sound often induces them to hold long monologues, sometimes in articulate sounds and syllables, sometimes not. This chattering is kept up till the grown people present are weary, and that by children who can not yet talk; and their screaming is often interrupted only by hoarseness, just as in the case of the polyphrasia of the insane.

_Dysphrasia of the Melancholy._--Children exert themselves perceptibly in their first attempts to speak, answer indolently or not at all, or frequently with embarrassment, always slowly, often with drawl and monotone, very frequently coming to a stop. They also sometimes begin to speak, and then lose at once the inclination to go on.

_Dysphrasia of the Delirious_ (_Wahnsinnigen_).--Children that have begun to speak often make new words for themselves. They have already invented signs before this; they are also unintelligible often-times because they use the words they have learned in a different sense.

_Dysphrasia of the Insane_ (_Verrueckten_).--The child is not yet prepared to speak. He possesses only non-co-ordinated sounds and isolated rudiments of words, primitive syllables, roots, as the primitive raw material of the future speech.

In many insane persons only the disconnected remains or ruins of their stock of words are left, so that their speech resembles that of the child at a certain stage.

_Dysphrasia of the Feeble-minded._--The child at first reacts only upon strong impressions, and that often indolently and clumsily and with outcry; later, upon impressions of ordinary strength, without understanding--laughing, crowing, uttering disconnected syllables.

So the patient reacts either upon strong impressions only, and that indolently, bluntly, with gestures that express little and with rude words, or he still reacts upon impressions of ordinary strength, but in flat, silly, disconnected utterances.

_Dysphrasia of Idiots._--Children have command at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without understanding their meaning, like parrots.

Imbeciles also frequently command only short words and sentences or monosyllabic words and sounds, or, finally, they lack all articulate sound. Many microcephalous idiots babble words without understanding their meaning, like little children.

_Echo-speech or Echolalia_ (_Imitative Reflex Speech_).--Children not yet able to frame a sentence correctly like to repeat the last word of a sentence they have heard; and this, according to my observations and researches, is so general that I am forced to call this echolalia a physiological transition stage. Of long words said to them, the children usually repeat only the last two syllables or the last syllable only. The feeble-minded also repeat monotonously the words and sentences said by a person in their neighborhood without showing an awakened attention, and in general without connecting any idea with what they say. (Romberg.)

_Interjectional Speech._--Children sometimes have a fancy for speaking in interjections. They express vague ideas by single vowels (like _ae_), syllables (e. g., _na_, _da_), and combinations of syllables, and frequently call out aloud through the house meaningless sounds and syllables. D and W are as yet undeveloped.

Often, too, children imitate the interjections used by members of the family--_hop!_ _patsch_, _bauz!_ an interjectional echolalia. Many deranged persons express their feelings in like manner, in sounds, especially vowels, syllables, or sound-combinations resembling words, which are void of meaning or are associated merely with obscure ideas (Martini). Then D is connected with M only through L and S, and so through _i_ and _e_.

_Embolophrasia._--Many children, long after they have overcome acataphasia and agrammatism, delight in inserting between words sounds, syllables, and words that do not belong there; e. g., they double the last syllable of every word and put an _eff_ to it: _ich-ich-eff_, _bin in-eff_, etc., or they make a kind of bleat between the words (Kussmaul); and, in telling a story, put extra syllables into their utterance while they are thinking.

Many adults likewise have the disagreeable habit of introducing certain words or meaningless syllables into their speech, where these do not at all belong; or they tack on diminutive endings to their words. The syllables are often mere sounds, like _eh_, _uh_; in many cases they sound like _eng_, _ang_ (angophrasia--Kussmaul).

_Palimphrasia._--Insane persons often repeat single sounds, syllables, or sentences, over and over without meaning; e. g., "I am-am-am-am."

"The phenomenon in many cases reminds us of children, who say or sing some word or phrase, a rhyme or little verse, so long continuously, like automata, that the by-standers can endure it no longer. It is often the ring of the words, often the sense, often both, by which the children are impressed. The child repeats them because they seem to him strange or very sonorous." (Kussmaul.)

_Bradyphrasia._--The speech of people that are sad or sleepy, and of others whose mental processes are indolent, often drags along with tedious slowness; is also liable to be broken off abruptly. The speaker comes to a standstill. This is not to be confounded with bradyphasia or with bradyarthria or bradylalia (see above).

In children likewise the forming of the sentence takes a long time on account of the as yet slow rise and combination of ideas, and a simple narrative is only slowly completed or not finished at all, because the intellectual processes in the brain are too fatiguing.

_Paraphrasia._--Under the same circumstances as in the case of bradyphrasia the (slow) speech may be marred and may become unintelligible because the train of thought is confused--e. g., in persons "drunk" with sleep--so that words are uttered that do not correspond to the original ideas.

In the case of children who want to tell something, and who begin right, the story may be interrupted easily by a recollection, a fresh train of thought, and still they go on; e. g., they mix up two fairy tales, attaching to the beginning of one the end of another.

_Skoliophrasia._--Distracted and timid feeble-minded persons easily make mistakes in speaking, because they can not direct their attention to what they are saying and to the way in which they are saying it, but they wander, allowing themselves to be turned aside from the thing to be said by all sorts of ideas and external impressions; and, moreover, they do not notice afterward that they have been making mistakes (cf. p. 53).

Children frequently put a wrong word in place of a right one well known to them, without noticing it. They allow themselves to be turned aside very easily from the main point by external impressions and all sorts of fancies, and often, in fact, say the opposite of what they mean without noticing it.

III. DYSMIMIA.

Disturbances of Gesture-Language (Pantomime).

_Perceptive Asemia._--Patients have lost the ability to _understand_ looks and gestures (Steinthal).

Children can not yet understand the looks and gestures of persons about them.

_Amnesic Amimia._--Aphasic persons can sometimes imitate gestures, but can not execute them when bid, but only when the gestures are made for them to imitate. Children that do not yet speak can imitate gestures if these are made for them to see, but it is often a long time before they can make them at the word of command.

_Ataxic Dysmimia and Amimia_ (_Mimetic Asemia_).--Patients can _no longer_ execute significative looks and gestures, on account of defective co-ordination.

Children can not express their states of desire, etc., because they do _not yet_ control the requisite co-ordination for the corresponding looks and gestures.

_Paramimia_ (_Paramimetic Asemia_).--Many patients can make use of looks and gestures, but confound them.

Children have not yet firmly impressed upon them the significance of looks and gestures; this is shown in their interchanging of these; e. g., the head is shaken in the way of denial when they are affirming something.

_Emotive Language_ (_Affectsprache_) _in Aphrasia._--In Aphrasia it happens that smiling, laughing, and weeping are _no longer_ controlled, and that they break out on the least occasion with the greatest violence, like the spinal reflexes in decapitated animals. (Hughlings-Jackson.)

Emotive language may continue when the language of ideas (Begriffssprache) is completely extinguished, and idiotic children without speech can even sing.

In children, far slighter occasions suffice normally to call forth smiles, laughter, and tears, than in adults. These emotional utterances are _not yet_ often voluntarily inhibited by the child that can not yet speak; on the contrary, they are unnecessarily repeated.

_Apraxia._--Many patients are _no longer_ in condition, on account of disturbed intellect, to make right use of ordinary objects, the use of which they knew well formerly; e. g., they can no longer find the way to the mouth; or they bite into the soap.

Children are _not yet_ in condition, on account of deficient practice, to use the common utensils rightly; e. g., they will eat soup with a fork, and will put the fork against the cheek instead of into the mouth.

4. Development of Speech in the Child.

We may now take up the main question as to the condition of the child that is learning to speak, in regard to the development and practicability of the nerve-paths and of the centers required for speech. For the comparison of the disturbances of speech in adults with the deficiencies of speech in the child, on the one hand, and the chronological observation of the child, on the other hand, disclose to us what parts of the apparatus of speech come by degrees into operation. First to be considered are the _impressive_ and _expressive_ paths in general.

All new-born human beings are deaf or hard of hearing, as has already been demonstrated. Since the hearing but slowly grows more acute during the first days, no utterances of sound at this period can be regarded as responses to any sound-impressions whatever. The first cry is purely reflexive, like the croaking of the decapitated frog when the skin of his back is stroked (Vol. I, p. 214). The cry is not heard by the newly-born himself and has not the least value as language. It is on a par with the squeaking of the pig just born, the bleating of the new-born lamb, and the peeping of the chick that is breaking its shell.

Upon this first, short season of physiological deaf-mutism follows the period during which crying expresses bodily conditions, feelings such as pain, hunger, cold. Here, again, there exists as yet no connection of the expressive phenomena with acoustic impressions, but there is already the employment of the voice with stronger expiration in case of strong and disagreeable excitations of other sensory nerves than those of general sensation and of the skin. For the child now cries at a dazzling light also, and at a bitter taste, as if the unpleasant feeling were diminished by the strong motor discharge. In any case the child cries because this loud, augmented expiration lessens for him the previously existing unpleasant feelings, without exactly inducing thereby a comfortable condition.

Not until later does a sudden sound-impression, which at first called forth only a start and then a quivering of the eyelids, cause also crying. But this loud sign of fright may be purely reflexive, just like the silent starting and throwing up of the arms at a sudden noise, and has at most the significance of an expression of discomfort, like screaming at a painful blow.

It is otherwise with the first loud response to an acoustic impression _recognized_ as new. The indefinable sounds of satisfaction made by the child that hears music for the first time are no longer reflexive, and are not symptoms of displeasure. I see in this reaction, which may be compared with the howling of the dog that for the first time in his life hears music--I see in this reaction of the apparatus of voice and of future speech, _the first sign of the connection now just established between impressive_ (acoustic) and _expressive_ (having the character of emotive language) _paths_. The impressive, separately, were long since open, as the children under observation after the first week allowed themselves to be quieted by the singing of cradle-songs, and the expressive, separately, must likewise have been open, since various conditions were announced by various sorts of crying.

Everything now depends on a well-established _intercentral communication_ between the two. This is next to be discussed.

The primitive connection is already an advance upon that of a reflex arc. The sound-excitations arriving from the ear at the central endings of the auditory nerve are not directly transformed into motor excitations for the laryngeal nerves, so that the glottis contracts to utter vocal sound. When the child (as early as the sixth to the eighth week) takes pleasure in music and laughs aloud, his voice can not in this case (as at birth) have been educed by reflex action, for without a cerebrum he would not laugh or utter joyous sounds, whereas even without that he cries.

From this, however, by no means follows the existence of a speech-center in the infant. The fact that he produces sounds easily articulated, although without choice, like _tahu_ and _amma_, proves merely the functional capacity of the peripheral apparatus of articulation (in the seventh week) at a period long before it is intentionally used for articulation. The unintentionally uttered syllables that make their appearance are, to be sure, simple, at least in the first half-year. It is vowels almost exclusively that appear in the first month, and these predominate for a long time yet. Of the consonants in the third month _m_ alone is generally to be noted as frequent. This letter comes at a later period also, from the raising and dropping of the lower jaw in expiration, an operation that is besides soon easy for the infant with less outlay of will than the letter _b_, which necessitates a firmer closing of the lips.

But in spite of the simplicity of all the vocal utterances and of the defectiveness of the articulatory apparatus, the child is able (often long before the seventh month) to respond to address, questions, chiding, either with inarticulate sounds or with vowels or by means of simple syllables, like _pa_, _ta_, _ma_, _na_, _da_, _mae_, _moe_, _goe_, _roe_ [_a_ as in _father_; ae as in _fate_; oe like _i_ in _bird_.] Since these responses are entirely, or almost entirely, lacking in microcephali and in children born deaf, they are not purely reflexive, like sneezing, e. g.; therefore there must be in the case of these a cerebral operation also, simple indeed, but indubitably intellectual, interposed between sound-perception and vocal utterance, especially as the infant behaves differently according to what he hears, and he discriminates very well the stern command from the caress, forbidding from allowing, in the voice of the person speaking to him. Yet it is much more the _timbre_, the accent, the pitch, the intensity of the voice and the sounds, the variation of which excites attention, than it is the spoken word. In the first half-year the child hears the vowels much better than he does the consonants, and will imperfectly understand or divine the sense of a few sounds only--e. g., when his name is uttered in a threatening tone he will hear merely the accented vowel, for at the first performance taught him, purposely postponed to a very late period (in his thirteenth month), it made no difference to my child whether we asked without changing a feature, "Wie gross?" (how tall?) or "ooss?" or "oo?" In all three cases he answered with the same movement of the hand.

Now, although all infants in normal condition, before they can repeat anything after others or can understand any word whatever, _express_ their feelings by various sounds, even by syllables, and _distinguish_ vowels and many consonants in the words spoken to them, yet this does not raise them above the intelligent animal. The response to friendly address and loud chiding by appropriate sounds is scarcely to be distinguished as to its psychical value from the joyous barking and whining of the poodle.

The pointer-dog's understanding of the few spoken utterances that are impressed upon him in his training is also quite as certain at least as the babe's understanding of the jargon of the nurse. The correctly executed movements or arrests of movement following the sound-impressions "Setz dich! Pfui! Zurueck! Vorwaerts! Allez! Fass! Apporte! Such! Verloren! Pst! Lass! Hierher! Brav! Leid's nicht! Ruhig! Wahr Dich! Hab Acht! Was ist das! Pfui Vogel! Pfui Hase! Halt!" prove that the bird-dog understands the meaning of the sounds and syllables and words heard as far as he needs to understand them. The training in the English language accomplishes the same result with "Down! Down charge! Steady! Toho! Fetch! Hold up!" as the training in the French language, with yet other words--so that we can by no means assume any hereditary connection whatever between the quality of the sound heard and the movement or arrest of movement to be executed, such as may perhaps exist in the case of the chick just hatched which follows the clucking of the hen. Rather does the dog learn afresh in every case the meaning of the words required for hunting, just as the speechless child comprehends the meaning of the first words of its future language without being able to repeat them himself--e. g., "Give! Come! Hand! Sh! Quiet!" Long before the child's mechanism of articulation is so far developed that these expressions can be produced by him, the child manifests his understanding of them unequivocally by corresponding movements, by gestures and looks, by obedience.

No doubt this behavior varies in individual cases, inasmuch as in some few the imitative articulation may be to some extent earlier developed than the understanding. There are many children who even in their first year have a monkey-like knack at imitation and repeat all sorts of things like parrots without guessing the sense of them. Here, however, it is to be borne in mind that such an echo-speech appears only after the _first_ understanding of some spoken word can be demonstrated; in no case before the fourth month. Lindner relates that when he one day observed that his child of eighteen weeks was gazing at the swinging pendulum of the house-clock, he went with him to it, saying, "Tick-tack," in time with the pendulum; and when he afterward called out to the child, who was no longer looking at the clock, "Tick-tack!" this call was answered, at first with delay, a little later immediately, by a turning of the look toward the clock. This proved that there was understanding long before the first imitation of words. Progress now became pretty rapid, so that at the end of the seventh month the questions, "Where is your eye? ear? head? mouth? nose? the table? chair? sofa?" were answered correctly by movements of hand and eyes. In the tenth month this child for the first time himself used a word as a means of effecting an understanding, viz., _mama_ (soon afterward, indeed, he called both parents _papa_). The child's inability to repeat distinctly syllables spoken for him is not to be attributed, shortly before the time at which he succeeds in doing it, to a purely psychical adynamy (impotence), not, as many suppose, to "being stupid," or to a weakness of will without organic imperfections determined by the cerebral development, for the efforts, the attention, and the ability to repeat incorrectly, show that the will is not wanting. Since also the peripheral impressive acoustic and expressive phonetic paths are intact and developed, as is proved by the acuteness of the hearing and the spontaneous formation of the very syllables desired, the cause of the inability to repeat correctly must be solely organic-centro-motor. The connecting paths between the sound-center and the syllable-center, and of both these with the speech motorium, are not yet or not easily passable; but the imitation of a single sound, be it only _a_, can not take place without the mediation of the cerebral cortex. Thus in the very first attempt to repeat something heard there exists an unquestionable advance in brain development; and the first successful attempt of this kind proves not merely the augmented functional ability of the articulatory apparatus and of the sound-center, and the practicability of the impressive paths that lead from the ear to the sound-center--it proves, above all, the establishment of intercentral routes that lead from the sound-center and the syllable-center to the motorium.

In fact, the correct _repeating_ of a sound heard, of a syllable, and, finally, of a word pronounced by another person, is the surest proof of the establishment and practicability of the entire impressive, central, and expressive path. It, however, proves nothing as to the _understanding_ of the sound or word heard and faultlessly repeated.

As the term "understanding" or "understand" is ambiguous, in so far as it may relate to the ideal content (the meaning), and at the same time to the mere perception of the word spoken (or written or touched)--e. g., when any one speaks indistinctly so that we do not "understand" him--it is advisable to restrict the use of this expression. _Understand_ shall in future apply only to the _meaning_ of the word; _hear_--since it is simply the perceiving of a word through the hearing that we have in view--will relate to the sensuous impression. It is clear, then, that all children who can hear but can not yet speak, repeat many words without understanding them, and understand many words without being able to repeat them, as Kussmaul has already observed. But I must add that the repeating of what is not understood begins only after some word (even one that can not be repeated) has been understood.

Now it is certain that the majority, if not all, of the children that have good hearing develop the understanding more at first, since the impressive side is practiced more and sooner than the expressive-articulatory. Probably those that imitate early and skillfully are the children that can speak earliest, and whose cerebrum grows fastest but also soonest ceases to grow; whereas those that imitate later and more sparingly, generally learn to speak later, and will generally be the more intelligent. For with the higher sort of activity goes the greater growth of brain. While the other children cultivate more the centro-motor portion, the sensory, the intellectual, is neglected. In animals, likewise, a brief, rapid development of the brain is wont to go along with inferior intelligence. The intelligence gets a better development when the child, instead of repeating all sorts of things without any meaning, tries to guess the meaning of what he hears. Precisely the epoch at which this takes place belongs to the most interesting in intellectual development. Like a pantomimist, the child, by means of his looks and gestures, and further by cries and by movements of all sorts, gives abundant evidence of his understanding and his desires, without himself speaking a single word. As the adult, after having half learned a foreign language from books, can not speak (imitate) it, and can not easily understand it when he hears it spoken fluently by one that is a perfect master of it, but yet makes out _single_ expressions and understands them, and divines the meaning of the whole, so the child at this stage can distinctly hear single words, can grasp the purport of them, and divine correctly a whole sentence from the looks and gestures of the speaker, although the child himself makes audible no articulate utterance except his own, for the most part meaningless, variable babble of sounds and syllables and outcries.

The causes of the slowness of the progress in expressing in articulate words what is understood and desired, on the part of normal children, is not, however, to be attributed, as it has often been, to a slower development of the expressive motor mechanism, but must be looked for in the difficulty of establishing the connection of the various central storehouses of sense-impressions with the intercentral path of connection between the acoustic speech-centers and the speech-motorium. For the purely peripheral articulatory acts are long since perfect, although as yet a simple "_a_" or "_pa_" can not be repeated after another person; for these and other sounds and syllables are already uttered correctly by the child himself.

The order of succession in which these separate sounds appear, without instruction, is very different in individual cases. With my boy, who learned to speak rather late, and was not occupied with learning by heart, the following was the order of the perfectly pure sounds heard by me:

On the left are the sounds or syllables indicated by one letter; on the right, the same indicated by more than one letter; and it is to be borne in mind that the child needs to pronounce only fourteen of the nineteen so-called consonants of the German alphabet in order to master the remaining five also; for

c = ts and k v = f and w x = ks and gs q = ku and kw z = ts and ds

and of the fourteen four require no new articulation, because

p is a toneless b t is a toneless d f is a toneless w k is a toneless g

Of the ten positions of the mouth required for all the consonants of the alphabet, nine are taken by the child within the first six months:*

Months. 1. Indefinite vowels; ae u, uae. 2. a, oe, o; m, g, r, t; h, am, ma, ta, hu, oer, roe, ar, ra, goe. 3. i; b, l, n, ua, oa, ao, ai, [(ei], oae, aeo, aea, aeoe; oem, in, ab, om; la, ho, moe, nae, na, ha, bu; ng, mb, gr. 4. e, [(aeu], a-u, aoe, ea; an; na, toe, la, me; nt. 5. ue (y); k, ag, eg, ek, ge, koe. 6. j; the oi ([(eu], [(aeu]), io, oee, eu (French); ij, aj, lingual-labial oeg, ich; ja, jae; rg, br, ch. sound, 7. d, p, aee, ui; mae. 8. eoe, ae, ou, [(au]; up; hoe, mi, te. 9. ap, ach, aem; pa, ga, cha. 10. el, ab, at, aet; dae, ba, ta, tae; nd. 11. ad, al, ak, er, ej, oed; da, gae, bae, ka, ke, je, he, ne; pr, tr. 12. w, aen, op, ew, aer; de, wae; nj, ld. 13. s (ss), en; hi; dn. 14. mu; kn, gn, kt. 15. z, ooe, oea, is, iss, es, ass, th (English), ith (Engl.), it; hae, di, wa, sse. 16. f (v), ok, on; do, go; bw, fp. 17. ib, oet, an; bi. 18. aei, iae; aep, im; tu, pae; ft. 19. oen, et, es; sa, be; st, tth (Engl.), s-ch, sj. 20. ub, ot, id, od, oj, uf, aet; bo, ro, jo; dj, dth (Engl.). 21. oep; fe; rl, dl, nk, pt. 22. ol; lo; ps, pt, tl, sch, tsch, pth (Engl.). 23. q, uo; id, op, um, em, us, un, ow, ed, uk, ig, il; joe, ju, po, mo, wo, fa, fo, fi, we, ku (qu), li, ti; tn, pf, gch, gj, tj, schg. 24. ut, esch; pu, wi, schi, pi. 25. oe, ul, il, och, iw, ip, ur; lt, rb, rt. 26. nl, ds, mp, rm, fl, kl, nch, ml, dr. 27. x, kch, cht, lch, ls, sw, sl. _____________________________________________________________________ * Pronounce the letters in the tabular view as in German.

Every such chronological view of the sequence of sounds is uncertain, because we can not observe the child uninterruptedly, and hence the first appearance of a new sound easily escapes notice. The above synopsis has a chronological value only so far as this, that it announces, concerning every single sound, that such sound was heard in its purity by me at least as early as the given month. The sound may, however, have been uttered considerably earlier without my hearing it. I know from personal experience that in other children many sounds appear much earlier; in my child, e. g., _ngae_ was observed too late, and I have no doubt that the first utterance of _f_ and _w_ was unobserved, although I was on the lookout for them. When it is maintained, on the contrary, that _m_ is not heard from a normal child until the tenth month, then the _am_ and _moe_ which appear universally in the first half-year have escaped notice. Earlier tabular views of this sort, which have even served as a foundation for instruction of deaf-mutes in speaking, do not rest exclusively on observation. Besides, in this matter, even two children hardly agree. According to my observations, I am compelled in spite of this disagreement to lay down the proposition as valid for all healthy children, that the greatly _preponderating majority of the sounds the child makes use of after learning verbal language, and many other sounds besides these, are correctly formed by him within the first eight months_, not intentionally, but just as much at random as any other utterance of sound not to be used later in speech, not appearing in any civilized language. I will only mention as an example the labio-lingual explosive sound, in which the tip of the tongue comes between the lips and, with an expiration, bursting from its confinement is drawn back swiftly (with or without tone). All children seem to like to form this sound, a sound between _p_, _b_, and _t_, _d_; but it exists in few languages.

Among the innumerable superfluous, unintentional, random, muscular movements of the infant, the movements of the muscles of the larynx, mouth, and tongue take a conspicuous place, because they ally themselves readily with acoustic effects and the child takes delight in them. It is not surprising, therefore, that precisely those vibrations of the vocal cords, precisely those shapings of the cavity of the mouth, and those positions of the lips, often occur which we observe in the utterance of our vowels, and that among the child-noises produced unconsciously and in play are found almost all our consonants and, besides, many that are used in foreign languages. The plasticity of the apparatus of speech in youth permits the production of a greater abundance of sounds and sound-combinations than is employed later, and not a single child has been observed who has, in accordance with the principle of the least effort (_principe du moindre effort_) applied by French authors to this province, advanced in regular sequence from the sounds articulated easily--i. e., with less activity of will--to the physiologically difficult; rather does it hold good for all the children I have observed, and probably for all children that learn to speak, that many of the sounds uttered by them at the beginning, in the speechless season of infancy, without effort and then forgotten, have to be learned afresh at a later period, have to be painstakingly acquired by means of imitation.

Mobility and perfection in the _technique_ of sound-formation are not speech. They come into consideration in the process of learning to speak as facilitating the process, because the muscles are perfected by previous practice; but the very first attempts to imitate voluntarily a sound heard show how slight this advantage is. Even those primitive syllables which the child of himself often pronounces to weariness, like _da_, he can not at the beginning (in the tenth month in my case) as yet say after any one, although he makes manifest by his effort--a regular strain--by his attention, and his unsuccessful attempts, that he would like to say them, as I have already mentioned. The reason is to be looked for in the still incomplete development of the sensori-motor central paths. In place of _tatta_ is sounded _tae_ or _ata_; in place of _papa_ even _tai_, and this not once only, but after a great many trials repeated again and again with the utmost patience. That the sound-image has been correctly apprehended is evident from the certainty with which the child responds correctly in various cases by gestures to words of similar sound unpronounceable by him. Thus, he points by mistake once only to the mouth (Mund) instead of the moon (Mond), and points correctly to the ear (Ohr) and the clock (Uhr) when asked where these objects are. The acuteness of hearing indispensable for repeating the sounds is therefore present before the ability to repeat.

On the whole, the infant or the young child already weaned must be placed higher at this stage of his mental development than a very intelligent animal, but not on account of his knowledge of language, for the dog also understands very well single words in the speech of his master, in addition to hunting-terms. He divines, from the master's looks and gestures, the meaning of whole sentences, and, although he has not been brought to the point of producing articulate sounds, yet much superior in this respect is the performance of the cockatoo, which learns all articulate sounds. A child who shows by looks and gestures and actions that he understands single words, and who already pronounces correctly many words by imitation without understanding them, does not on this account stand higher intellectually than a sagaciously calculating yet speechless elephant or an Arabian horse, but because he already forms many more and far more complex concepts.

The animal phase of intellect lasts, in the sound, vigorous, and not neglected child, to the end of the first year of life at the farthest; and long before the close of this he has, by means of the _feelings_ of pleasure and of discomfort, very definitely distinguishable by him even in the first days of life, but for which he does not get the verbal expressions till the second and third year, formed for himself at least in one province, viz., that of food, _ideas_ more or less well defined. Romanes also rightly remarks that the _concept_ of food arises in us through the feeling of hunger quite independently of language. Probably this concept is the very first that is formed by the quite young infant, only he would not name it "food," if indeed he named it at all, but would understand by it everything that puts an end to the feeling of hunger. It is of great importance to hold firmly to this fact of the origination of ideas, and that not of sensuous percepts only but of concepts, without language, because it runs contrary to prevailing assumptions.

He who has conscientiously observed the mental development of infants must come to the conclusion that _the formation of ideas is not bound up with the learning of words, but is a necessary prerequisite for the understanding of the words to be learned first, and therefore for learning to speak_. Long before the child understands even a single word, before he uses a single syllable consistently with a definite meaning, he already has a number of ideas which are expressed by looks and gestures and cries. To these belong especially ideas gained through touch and sight. Associations of objects touched and seen with impressions of taste are probably the first generators of concepts. The child, still speechless and toothless, takes a lively interest in bottles; sees, e. g., a bottle that is filled with a white opaque liquid (Goulard water), and he stretches out his arms with desire toward it, screaming a long time, in the belief that it is a milk-bottle (observed by me in the case of my child in the thirty-first week). The bottle when empty or when filled with water is not so long attractive to him, so that the idea of food (or of something to drink, something to suck, something sweet) must arise from the sight of a bottle with certain contents without the understanding or even utterance of any words. The formation of concepts without words is actually demonstrated by this; for the speechless child not only perceived the points of identity of the various bottles of wine, water, oil, the nursing-bottle and others, the sight of which excited him, but he united in one notion the contents of the different sorts of bottles when what was in them was white--i. e., he had separated the concept of food from that of the bottle. Ideas are thus independent of words.

Certain as this proposition is, it is not, however, supported by the reasons given for it by Kussmaul, viz., that one and the same object is variously expressed in various languages, and that a new animal or a new machine is known before it is named; for no one desires to maintain that certain ideas are _necessarily_ connected with certain words, without the knowledge of which they could not arise--it is maintained only that ideas do not exist without words. Now, any object has some appellation in each language, were it only the appellation "object," and a new animal, a new machine, is already called "animal," "machine," before it receives its special name. Hence from this quarter the proof can not be derived. On the other hand, the speechless infant certainly furnishes the proof, which is confirmed by some observations on microcephalous persons several years old or of adult age. The lack of the power of abstraction apparent in these persons and in idiots is not so great that they have not developed the notion "food" or "taking of food."

Indeed, it is not impossible that the formation of ideas may continue after the total loss of word-memory, as in the remarkable and much-talked-of case of Lordat. Yet this case does not by any means prove that the formation of concepts of the _higher_ order is possible without previous mastery of verbal language; rather is it certain that concepts rising above the lowest abstractions can be formed only by him who has thoroughly learned to speak: for intelligent children without speech are acquainted, indeed, with more numerous and more complex ideas than are very sagacious animals, but not with many more abstractions of a higher sort, and where the vocabulary is small the power of abstraction is wont to be as weak in adults as in children. The latter, to be sure, acquire the words for the abstract with more difficulty and later than those for the concrete, but have them stamped more firmly on the mind (for, when the word-memory fails, proper names and nouns denoting concrete objects are, as a rule, first forgotten). But it would not be admissible, as I showed above, to conclude from this that no abstraction at all takes place without words. To me, indeed, it is probable that in the most intense thought the most abstract conceptions are effected most rapidly without the disturbing images of the sounds of words, and are only supplementarily clothed in words. In any case the intelligent child forms many concepts of a lower sort without any knowledge of words at all, and he therefore performs abstraction without words.

When Sigismund showed to his son, not yet a year old and not able to speak a word, a stuffed woodcock, and, pointing to it, said, "Bird," the child directly afterward looked toward another side of the room where there stood upon the stove a stuffed white owl, represented as in flight, which he must certainly have observed before. Here, then, the concept had already arisen; but how little specialized are the first concepts connected with words that do not relate to food is shown by the fact that in the case of Lindner's child (in the tenth month) _up_ signified also _down_, _warm_ signified also _cold_. Just so my child used _too much_ also for _too little_; another child used _no_ also for _yes_; a third used _I_ for _you_. If these by no means isolated phenomena rest upon a lack of differentiation of the concepts, "then the child already has a presentiment that opposites are merely the extreme terms of the same series of conceptions" (Lindner), and this before he can command more than a few words.

But to return to the condition of the normal child, as yet entirely speechless. It is clear that, being filled with desire to give expression in every way to his feelings, especially to his needs, he will use his voice, too, for this purpose. The adult likewise cries out with pain, although the "Oh!" has no direct connection with the pain, and there is no intention of making, by means of the outcry, communication to others. Now, before the newly-born is in condition to seek that which excites pleasure, to avoid what excites displeasure, he cries out in like fashion, partly without moving the tongue, partly with the sound _ae_ dominant, repeated over and over monotonously till some change of external conditions takes place. After this the manner of crying begins to vary according to the condition of the infant; then come sounds clearly distinguishable as indications of pleasure or displeasure; then syllables, at first to some extent spontaneously articulated without meaning, afterward such as express desire, pleasure, etc.; not until much later imitated sounds, and often the imperfect imitation of the voices of animals, of inorganic noises, and of spoken words. The mutilation of his words makes it seem as if the child were already inventing new designations which are soon forgotten; and as the child, like the lunatic, uses familiar words in a new sense after he has begun to learn to talk, his style of expression gets an original character, that of "baby-talk." Here it is characteristic that the feelings and ideas do not now first _arise_, though they are now first articulately expressed; but they were in part present long since and did not become articulate, but were expressed by means of looks and gestures. In the adult ideas generate new words, and the formation of new words does not cease so long as thinking continues; but in the child without speech new feelings and new ideas generate at first only new cries and movements of the muscles of the face and limbs, and, the further we look back into child-development proper, the greater do we find the number of the conditions expressed by one and the same cry. The organism as yet has too few means at its disposal. In many cases of aphasia every mental state is expressed by one and the same word (often a word without meaning). Upon closer examination it is found, however, that for the orator also, who is complete master of speech, all the resources of language are insufficient. No one, e. g., can name all the colors that may be perceived, or describe pain, or describe even a cloud, so that several hearers gain the same idea of its form that the speaker has. The words come short, but the idea is clear. If words sufficed to express clearly clear conceptions, then the greater part of our philosophical and theological literature would not exist. This literature has its basis essentially in the inevitable fact that different persons do not associate the same concept with the same word, and so one word is used to indicate different concepts (as is the case with the child). If a concept is exceptionally difficult--i. e., exceptionally hard to express clearly in words--then it is wont to receive many names, e. g., "die," and the confusion and strife are increased; but words alone render it possible to form and to make clear concepts of a higher sort. They favor the formation of new ideas, and without them the intellect in man remains in a lower stage of development just because they are the most trustworthy and the most delicate means of expression for ideas. If ideas are not expressed at all, or not intelligibly, their possessor can not use them, can not correct or make them effective. Those ideas only are of value, as a general thing, which continue to exist after being communicated to others. Communication takes place with accuracy (among human beings) only by means of words. It is therefore important to know how the child learns to speak words, and then to use them.

I have above designated, as the chief difficulty for the child in the formation of words, the establishment of a connection between the central storehouse for sense-impressions--i. e., the sensory centers of higher rank--with the intercentral path of connection between the center-for-sounds and the speech-motorium. After the establishment of these connections, and long after ideas have been formed, the sound-image of the word spoken by the mother, when it emerges in the center-for-sounds directly after the rise of a clear idea, is now repeated by the child accurately, or, in case it offers insurmountable difficulties of articulation for pronunciation, inaccurately. This fact of _sound-imitation_ is fundamental. Beyond it we can not go. Especially must be noted here as essential that it appears to be an entirely indifferent matter what syllables and words are employed for the first designation of the child's ideas. Were one disposed to provide the child with false designations, he could easily do it. The child would still connect them logically. If taught further on that two times three are five, he would merely give the _name_ five to what is six, and would soon adopt the usual form of expression. In making a beginning of the association of ideas with articulate syllables, such syllables are, as a rule, employed (probably in all languages) as have already been often uttered by the child spontaneously without meaning, because these offered no difficulties of articulation; but only the child's family put meaning into them. Such syllables are _pa_, _ma_, with their doubled form _papa_, _mama_, for "father" and "mother," in connection with which it is to be observed that the meaning of them is different in different languages and even in the dialects of a language. For _maman_, _mama_, _mama_, _mamme_, _mammeli_, _moemme_, _mam_, _mamma_, _mammeken_, _memme_, _memmeken_, _mamm[)e]l[)e]_, _mammi_, are at the same time child-words and designations for "mother" in various districts of Germany, whereas these and very similar expressions signify also the mother's breast, milk, pap, drink, nursing-bottle; nay, even in some languages the father is designated by _Ma_-sounds, the mother by _Ba_-and _Pa_-sounds.

It is very much the same with other primitive syllables of the babe's utterance, e. g., _atta_. Where this does not denote the parents or grandparents it is frequently used (_tata_, _tatta_, _tata_, also in England and Germany) in the sense of "gone" ("fort") and "goodby."

These primitive syllables, _pa-pa_, _ma-ma_, _tata_ and _apa_, _ama_, _ata_, originate of themselves when in the expiration of breath the passage is stopped either by the lips (_p_, _m_) or by the tongue (_d_, _t_); but after they have been already uttered many times with ease, without meaning, at random, the mothers of all nations make use of them to designate previously existing ideas of the child, and designate by them what is most familiar. Hence occurs the apparent confounding of "milk" and "breast" and "mother" and "(wet-) nurse" or "nurse" and "bottle," all of which the child learns to call _mam_, _amma_, etc.

But just at this period appears a genuine echolalia, the child, unobserved, repeating correctly and like a machine, often in a whisper, all sorts of syllables, when he hears them at the end of a sentence. The normal child, before he can speak, repeats sounds, syllables, words, if they are short, "mechanically," without understanding, as he imitates movements of the hands and the head that are made in his sight. Speaking is a movement-making that invites imitation the more because it can be strictly regulated by means of the ear. Anything more than regulation is not at first given by the sense of hearing, for those born deaf also learn to speak. They can even, like normal children, speak quite early in dreams (according to Gerard van Asch). Those born deaf, as well as normal children, when one turns quietly toward them, often observe attentively the lips (and also touch them sometimes) and the tongue of the person speaking; and this visual image, even without an auditory image, provokes imitation, which is made perfect by the combination of the two. This combination is lacking in the child born blind, pure echolalia prevailing in this case; in the one born deaf, the combination is likewise wanting, the reading-off of the syllables from the mouth coming in as a substitute. With the deaf infant the study of the mouth-movements is, as is well known, the only means of understanding words spoken aloud, and it is sight that serves almost exclusively for this, very rarely touch; and the child born deaf often repeats the visible movements of lips and tongue better than the hearing child that can not yet talk. It is to be observed, in general, that the hearing child makes less use, on the whole, of the means of reading-off from the mouth than we assume, but depends chiefly on the ear. I have always found, too, that the child has the greatest difficulty in imitating a position of the mouth, in case the sound belonging to it is not made, whereas he easily achieves the same position of the mouth when the acoustic effect goes along with it.

Accordingly, the connection between the ear and the speech-center must be shorter or more practicable in advance (hereditarily) than that between the eye and the speech-center. With regard to both associations, however, the gradually progressive shortening or consolidating is to be distinguished in space and time. With the child that does not yet speak, but is beginning to repeat syllables correctly and to associate them with primitive ideas, the act of imitation takes longer than with the normal adult, but the paths in the brain that he makes use of are shorter, absolutely and relatively--absolutely, because the whole brain is smaller; relatively, because the higher centers, which at a later period perform their functions with consciousness and accessory ideas, are still lacking. Notwithstanding this, the time is longer than at a later period--often amounting to several seconds--because the working up of what has been heard, and even the arrangement of it in the center for sound-images, and of what has been seen in the center for sight-images, takes more time apart from a somewhat less swift propagation of the nerve-excitement in the peripheral paths. The child's imitation can not be called fully conscious or deliberate. It resembles the half-conscious or unconscious imitation attained by the adult through frequent repetition--i. e., through manifold practice--and which, as a sort of reminiscence of conscious or an abbreviation of deliberate imitation, results from frequent continuous use of the same paths. Only, the child's imitations last longer, and especially the reading-off from the mouth. The child can not distinguish the positions of the mouth that belong to a syllable, but can produce them himself very correctly. He is like the patients that Kussmaul calls "word-blind," who can not, in spite of good sight, read the written words they see, but can express them in speech and writing. For the same word, e. g., _atta_, which the child does not read off from the mouth and does not repeat, he uses himself when he wants to be taken out; thus the inability is not expressive-motor, but central or intercentral. For the child can already see very well the movement of mouth and tongue; the impressive sight-path has been long established.

Herein this sort of word-blindness agrees fully with the physiological word-deafness of the normal child without speech, whose hearing is good. For he understands wrongly what he hears, when, e. g., in response to the order, "No! no!" he makes the affirmative movement of the head, although he can make the right movement very well. Here too, then, it is not centrifugal and centripetal peripheral lines, but intercentral paths or centers, that are not yet sufficiently developed--in the case of my child, in the fourteenth month. The path leading from the word-center to the dictorium, and the word-center itself, must have been as yet too little used.

From all this it results, in relation to the question, how the child comes to learn and to use words, that in the first place he has ideas; secondly, he imitates sounds, syllables, and words spoken for him; and, thirdly, he associates the ideas with these. E. g., the idea "white+wet+sweet+warm" having arisen out of frequent seeing, feeling, and tasting of milk, it depends upon what primitive syllable is selected for questioning the hungry infant, for talking to him, or quieting him, whether he expresses his desire for food by _moem_, _mimi_, _nana_, _ning_, or _maman_, or _maem_, or _mem_, or _mima_, or yet other syllables. The oftener he has the idea of food (i. e., something that banishes hunger or the unpleasant feeling of it), and at the same time the sound-impression "milk," so much the more will the latter be associated with the former, and in consideration of the great advantages it offers, in being understood by all, will finally be adopted. Thus the child learns his first words. But in each individual case the first words acquired in this manner have a wider range of meaning than the later ones.

By means of pure echolalia, without associating ideas with the word babbled in imitation, the child learns, to be sure, to articulate words likewise; but he does not learn to understand them or to use them properly unless coincidences, intentional or accidental, show him this or that result when this or that word is uttered by him. If the child, e. g., hearing the new word "Schnee," says, as an echo, _nee_, and then some one shows him actual snow, the meaningless _nee_ becomes associated with a sense-intuition; and later, also, nothing can take the place of the intuition--i. e., the direct, sensuous perception--as a means of instruction. This way of learning the use of words is exactly the opposite of that just discussed, and is less common because more laborious. For, in the first case, the idea is first present, and only needs to be expressed (through hearing the appropriate word). In the second case, the word comes first, and the idea has to be brought in artificially. Later, the word, not understood, awakens curiosity, and thereby generates ideas. But this requires greater maturity.

The third way in which the first words are learned is this: The idea and the word appear almost simultaneously, as in onomatopoetic designations and interjections. Absolutely original onomatopoetic words are very rare with children, and have not been observed by me except after the children already knew some words. The names of animals, _bow-wow_, _moo-moo_, _peep-peep_ (bird), _hotto_ (horse), from the expression of the carter, "hott-ho" ("_tt_," instead of _Haut_ (the skin), i. e., "left," in contrast with "aarr"--_Haar_, _Maehne_ (the mane)--i. e., "right"), are spoken for the child by the members of his family. Some names of animals, like _kukuk_ (cuckoo), also _kikeriki_ (cock) and _kuak_ (duck, frog), are probably formed often without having been heard from others, only more indistinctly, by German, English (American), and French children. _Ticktack_ (_tick-tick_) has also been repeated by a boy of two years for a watch. On the other hand, _weo-weo-weo_ (German, _[)u]io_) for the noise of winding a watch (observed by Holden in a boy of two years) is original. _Huet_, as an unsuccessful imitation of the locomotive-whistle by my boy of two and a half years, seems also noteworthy as an onomatope independently invented, because it was used daily for months in the same way merely to designate the whistle. The voice of the hen, of the redstart, the creaking of a wheel, were imitated by my child of his own accord long before he could speak a word. But this did not go so far as the framing of syllables. It is not easy in this to trace so clearly the framing of a concept as attaching itself directly to onomatopoetic forms as it is in a case communicated by Romanes. A child that was beginning to talk, saw and heard a duck on the water, and said _quack_. Thereafter the child called, on the one hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all liquids, _quack_. Finally, it called all coins also _quack_, after having seen an eagle on a French sou. Thus the child came, by gradual generalization, to the point of designating a fly, wine, and a piece of money by the same onomatopoetic word, although only the first perception contained the characteristic that gave the name.

Another case is reported by Eduard Schulte: A boy of a year and three quarters applied the joyous outcry _ei_ (which may be an imitated interjection), modifying it first into _eiz_, into _aze_, and then into _ass_, to his wooden goat on wheels, and covered with rough hide; _eiz_, then, became exclusively a cry of joy; _ass_, the name for everything that moved along--e. g., for animals and his own sister and the wagon; also for everything that moved at all; finally, for everything that had a rough surface. Now, as this child already called all coverings of the head and covers of cans _huta_, when he saw, for the first time, a fur cap, he at once christened it _ass-huta_. Here took place a decided subordination of one concept to another, and therewith a new formation of a word. How broad the comprehensiveness of the concept designated _huta_ was, is perceived especially in this, that it was used to express the wish to have objects at which the child pointed. He liked to put all sorts of things that pleased him upon his head, calling them _huta_. Out of the _huta_, for "I should like to have that as a hat" grew, then, after frequent repetition, "I should like that." There was in this case an extension of the narrower concept, after it had itself experienced previously a differentiation, and so a limitation, by means of the suffix _ass_. These examples show how independent of words the formation of concepts is. With the smallest stock of words the concepts are yet manifold, and are designated by the same word when there is a lack of words for the composition of new words, and so for fresh word-formation.

The formation of words out of interjections without imitation has not been observed. Here belongs the _rollu_, _rollolo_, uttered by my boy, of his own accord, on seeing rolling balls or wheels; and (in the twentieth month) _rodi_, _otto_, _rojo_, where the rotation perceived by the child occasions at once the one or the other exclamation containing _l_ or _r_. In the case of Steinthal, it was _lu-lulu_; in the case of a boy a year and a half old, observed by Kussmaul, it was _golloh_. In these cases the first interjection is always occasioned by a _noise_, not simply by the sight of things rolling without noise. The interjection must accordingly be styled imitative. A combination of the original--i. e., inborn--interjectional sounds into syllables and groups of syllables, without the assistance of members of the family, and without imitation, for the purpose of communicating an idea, is not proved to exist.

On the whole, the way in which the child learns to speak not merely resembles the way in which he learns at a later period to write, but is essentially completely in accord with it. Here, too, he makes no new inventions. First are drawn strokes and blurs without meaning; then certain strokes are imitated; then signs of sounds. These can not be at once combined into syllables, and even after the combination has been achieved and the written word can be made from the syllables it is not yet understood. Yet the child could see, even before the first instruction in writing or the first attempt at scribbling, every individual letter in the dimensions in which he writes it later. So, too, the speechless child hears every sound before he understands syllables and words, and he understands them before he can speak them. The child commonly learns reading before writing, and so understands the sign he is to write before he can write it. Yet the sign written by himself is often just as unintelligible to him as the word he himself speaks. The analogy is perfect.

If the first germs of words, after ideas have begun to become clear by means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category belongs the comparative _hocher_ for _hoeher_ in the sentence _hocher bauen_ (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request when playing with building-stones). The understanding of the comparative is plainly manifest in this. When, therefore, the same child in his fifth year, to the improper question, "Whom do you like better, papa or mamma?" answers, "Papa and mamma," we should not infer a lack of that understanding, as many do (e. g., Heyfelder); but the decision is impossible to the child. Just so in the case of the question, "Would you rather have the apple or the pear?"

Other inventions of my child were the verb _messen_ for "mit dem Messer schneiden" (to cut with the knife); _schiffern_, i. e., "das Schiff bewegen" (move the ship), for "rudern," (row). And the preference of the weak inflection on the part of all children is a proof that _after_ the appropriation of a small number of words through imitation, independent--always logical--changes of formation are undertaken. _Gegebt_, _gegeht_, _getrinkt_ (gived, goed, drinked), have never been heard by the child; but "gewebt, geweht, gewinkt" (as in English, waved, wafted, beckoned), have been known to him as models (or other formations corresponding to these). Yet this is by no means to say that every mutilation or transformation the child proposes is a copy after an erroneously selected model; rather the child's imagination has a wide field here and acts in manifold fashion, especially by combinations. "My teeth-roof pains me," said a boy who did not yet know the word "palate." Another in his fourth year called the road (Weg) the "go" (Gehe). A child of three years used the expression, "Just grow me" (_wachs mich einmal_) for "Just see how I have grown" (Sieh einmal wie ich gewachsen bin) (Lindner). Such creations of the childish faculty of combination, arising partly through blending, partly through transference, are collected in a neat pamphlet, "Zur Philosophie der Kindersprache," by Agathon Keber, 1868. The most of them, however, are from a later time of life than that here treated of. So it is with the two "heretical" utterances communicated by Roesch. A child said _unterblatte_ (under-leaf) for "Oblate," because he saw the wafer (Oblate) slipped under the leaf of paper (Blatt); and he called the "American chair," "Herr-Decaner-chair," because somebody who was called "Herr Decan" used to sit in it. Here may be seen the endeavor to put into the acoustic impression not understood a meaning. These expressions are not inventions, but they are evidence of intellect. They can not, of course, appear in younger children without knowledge of words, because they are transformations of words.

On the other hand it is of the greatest importance for the understanding of the first stage of the use of words in their real significance, after the acquirement of them has once begun, to observe how many different ideas the child announces by one and the same verbal expression. Here are some examples: _Tuhl_ (for Stuhl, chair) signifies--1. "My chair is gone"; 2. "The chair is broken"; 3. "I want to be lifted into the chair"; 4. "Here is a chair." The child (Steinthal's) says (in the twenty-second month), when he sees or hears a barking dog, _bellt_ (barks), and thinks he has by that word designated the whole complex phenomenon, the sight-perception of the dog and of a particular dog, and the sound-perception; but he says _bellt_ also when he merely hears the dog. No doubt the memory-image of the dog he has seen is then revived for him.

Through this manifold significance of a word, which is a substitute for a whole sentence, is exhibited a much higher activity of the intellect than appears in the mutilation and new formation of words having but one meaning to designate a sense-impression, for, although in the latter is manifested the union of impressions into perceptions and also of qualities into concepts, wherein an unconscious judgment is involved, yet a _clear_ judgment is not necessarily connected with them. The union of concepts into conscious clear judgments is recognized rather in the formation of a sentence, no matter whether this is expressed by one word or by several words.

In connection with this an error must be corrected that is wide-spread. It consists in the assumption that all children begin to speak with nouns, and that these are followed by verbs. This is by no means the case. The child daily observed by me used an adjective for the first time in the twenty-third month in order to express a judgment, the first one expressed in the language of those about him. He said "hot" for "The milk is too hot." In general, the appropriation and employment of words for the first formation of sentences depends, in the first instance, upon the action of the adults in the company of the child. A good example of this is furnished by an observation of Lindner, whose daughter in her fourteenth month first begged with her hands for a piece of apple, upon which the word "apple" was distinctly pronounced to her. After she had eaten the apple she repeated the request, re-enforcing her gesture this time by the imitated sound _appn_, and her request was again granted. Evidently encouraged by her success, the child from that time on used _appn_ for "eat, I want to eat," as a sign of her desire to eat in general, because those about her "accepted this signification and took the word stamped by her upon this concept for current coin, else it would very likely have been lost." This also confirms my statement (p. 85) that a child easily learns to speak with logical correctness with wrong words. He also speaks like the deaf-mute with logical correctness with quite a different arrangement of words from that of his speech of a later period. Thus the child just mentioned, in whom "the inclination to form sentences was manifest from the twenty-second month," said, "hat die Olga getrinkt," when she had drunk!

But every child learns at first not only the language of those in whose immediate daily companionship he grows up, but also at first the peculiarities of these persons. He imitates the accent, intonation, dialect, as well as the word, so that a Thuringian child may be surely distinguished from a Mecklenburg child even in the second and third year, and, at the same time, we may recognize the peculiarities of the speech of its mother or nurse, with whom it has most intercourse. This phenomenon, the persistence of dialects and of peculiarities of speech in single families, gives the impression, on a superficial observation, of being something inherited; whereas, in fact, nothing is inherited beyond the voice through inheritance of the organic peculiarities of the mechanism of phonation. For everything else completely disappears when a child learns to speak from his birth in a foreign community.

Hereditary we may, indeed, call the characteristic of humanity, speech; hereditary, also, is articulation in man, and the faculty of acquiring any articulate language is innate. But beyond this the tribal influence does not reach. If the possibility of learning to speak words phonetically is wanting because ear or tongue refuses, then another language comes in as a substitute--that of looks, gestures, writing, tactile images--then not Broca's center, but another one is generated. So that the question whether a speech-center already exists in the alalic child must be answered in the negative; the center is formed only when the child hears speech, and, if he does not hear speech, no center is developed. In this case the ganglionic cells of the posterior third of the third frontal convolution are otherwise employed, or they suffer atrophy. In learning to speak, on the contrary, there is a continuous development, first of the sound-center, then of the syllable-center, then of the word-center and the dictorium. The brain grows through its own activity.