Children, as everybody knows, are wont to render their elders that highest form of flattery, imitation. Our chronicle is unfortunately rather meagre in observations on the first imitative movements. There is no evidence that the writer went to work in Preyer’s careful way to test this capability. He thinks he saw distinct traces of imitation (of the pointing movement) at the end of the fifteenth week, though he admits that a deliberate attempt to copy a movement was only placed beyond doubt some time later.
There is, I regret to say, a terrible gap in the chronicle between the ninth and the sixteenth month. This is particularly unfortunate because this is just the period when the child is making a beginning at some of the most difficult of accomplishments, e.g., mastering the speech of his ancestors. To make up for this loss, the record becomes fuller and decidedly more interesting as we enter upon the second year. To this next stage of the history we may now pass.
Second Year.
The observations from the date of the resumption of the diary, at the age of sixteen months, begin to have more of human interest about them. It is not till this year has advanced that the child makes headway in handling the knotty intricacies of an elaborate language like ours, and it is through the medium of this mastered speech that he is best able to disclose himself to the observer. The observations on C.’s progress during the second year relate largely to language and intelligence as expressing itself in language. We may, accordingly, begin this section by giving a brief sketch of the child’s linguistic progress.[[294]]
During the first six months nothing was observable in the way of vocal sounds but the ordinary baby-singing utterances of the ‘la-la’ category. In this tentative vocalisation vowel sounds, of course, preponderated. There was quite a gamut of quaint vowel sounds, ranging from the broad a to the cockney ow, that is, a-oo. These sounds were purely emotional signs. Thus a prolonged ā sound indicated surprise with a dash of displeasure when the child suddenly encountered an obstacle to his movements, as on catching his dress or striking his head gently. Again, a kind of ō or oo sound, formed by sucking in the breath, appeared to indicate that the small person was pleased with some new object of contemplation, as a freshly discovered picture.
A sudden enlargement of the range of articulatory excursion was noticeable on the completion of the twenty-seventh week, when C. astonished his parents by breaking out into a series of ‘da-da’s’ and ‘ba-ba’s’ or ‘pa-pa’s’. These reduplications were quite in keeping with his earlier sounds, e.g., a-oo, a-oo. He soon followed up this brilliant success by other experiments, as in the production of the sounds ou-a and ditta, also ung and ang.[[295]]
Coming now to the commencement of the true linguistic period, that is to say, when C. had attained the age of sixteen months, we find him by no means precocious in the matter of speech. He reproduced very few of the many names the meaning of which he perfectly understood. As to other verbal signs he seems to have acted on the principle of biological economy, saving himself the articulatory effort. Thus although he used sounds for expressing assent, viz., “ey,” with falling inflection, he contented himself in the case of negation with the old declining or refusing gesture, viz., shaking the head. The movement of nodding seems to have been first used as an affirmative sign at the age of seventeen months when he was asked whether his food was hot.[[296]]
C. illustrated the common childish impulse to mimic natural sounds. Thus when sixteen months old he spontaneously imitated in a rough fashion the puffing sound produced by his father when indulging in the solace of tobacco; and he uttered a similar explosive sound when hearing the wind. Yet this child does not seem to have been a particularly good illustration of the onomatopoetic impulse.
While the imitative impulse thus aids in the growth of an independent baby vocabulary, it contributes, as we have seen, to the adoption of the language of the community. At first, however, the little learner will not repeat a sound merely in response to another’s lead. Many a mother is doubtless able to recall the chagrin which she experienced when on trying to trot out her baby’s linguistic powers by giving the lead, e.g., “Say ta-ta to the lady!” the little autocrat obdurately refused to comply with the parental injunction. It is only when what the child himself considers to be the appropriate circumstances recur, and, what is more, when the corresponding feeling is excited in his breast, that he utters the sound. Thus C.’s father observes that though the child will not say “ta-ta” when told to do so, he will say it readily enough when he sees him, hat in hand, moving towards the door. In like manner the father remarks: “He will say, ‘Ta’ (‘thank you’), on receiving something, yet not do so in mere response to me when I say it”. Herein, it would seem, the vocal imitation of children is less mechanical and more intelligent than that of animals, as the parrot.
It was not until he was well on in his second year that C. condescended to let his young speech-organ be played on by another’s will. By this time, it may be conjectured, associations between sounds and vocal actions had become firm enough to allow of such imitation without a consciousness of exertion or strain. Having no special reason to refuse he very sensibly fell in with others’ suggestions. It is not at all improbable, too, that at this stage of development the little vocalist found a pleasure in trying his instrument and producing new effects.