It is evident from these quotations that the experiences at D——, just at the beginning of the third year, had woven themselves into the tissue of his permanent memory. The father remarks in a footnote that C. retains a certain recollection of D—— at present, that is to say, in his fourteenth year.
These lively recallings show a growth of imaginative power, and this was seen in other ways too. Thus it is remarked by the father in the fourth month of the year that he was getting much comfort from anticipation. If there are apples or other things on the table which he likes but must not have, he will philosophically remark, “Ningi have apples by-and-by when he big boy”. He says this with much emphasis, rising at the end to a shouting tone, and half breaking out into jubilant laughter.
The childish power of vivid imaginative realisation was abundantly illustrated in his play. Here is a sample (end of fourth month). His sister went to the end of the room and said (with a reference to their recent visit to the sea-side): ‘I’m going far away on the beach’. He then began to whisper something, and went under the table and said distinctly: ‘Ningi go away from Tit, far away on beach’. He repeated this with tremulous voice, and at length burst out crying. He wept also when his sister pretended to do the same, so that these little tragic representations had to be stopped as dangerously exciting.
It has often been said that ‘fibbing’ in young children is the outcome of a vivid imagination. C. illustrated this. As the example given under the second year shows, his daring in inventing untruth and passing it off as truth was pure play, and frankly shown to be so by the accompaniment of a hearty laugh. This tendency to invent continued to assert itself. Thus when (in the eighth month) he is asked a question, as, “Who told you so?” and has no suitable answer ready he will say, ‘Dolly,’ showing his sense of the fun of the thing by a merry laugh. The father remarks that it is a little difficult to bring heavy moral artillery to bear on this playful fibbing which is evidently intended much more to astonish than to deceive.[[309]]
We may now see what progress C. was making in thinking power during this year. It is during the third year that children may be expected to get a much better hold on the slippery forms of language, and at the same time to show in connexion with a freer and more extensive use of language a finer and deeper insight into the manifold relations of things.
In C.’s case, to judge by the journal, the progress of speech advanced at a normal pace, neither hurrying nor yet greatly loitering. Articulation, the father remarks early in the year, has got much more precise, only a few sounds seeming to occasion difficulty, as for example the initial s, which he transforms into an aspirate, saying, for example, ‘huga’ for sugar.
A noticeable linguistic advance is registered in the fourth month of the year, viz., a kind of sudden and energetic raid on the names of objects and persons. “He is always asking the names of things now (writes our chronicler). Thus, after calling a common object, as a brush, by its name he will ask me, ‘What is the name of this?’ Perhaps he thinks that everything has its own exclusive or ‘proper’ name as he has. He is beginning to note, too, that some things have more than one proper name, that his mother, for example, though called ‘ma’ by himself, is addressed by her Christian name by me, and so forth. When asked, ‘What is Ningi’s name?’ he now answers, ‘Kifford’.”
What is far more significant, he now (æt. two years three months) began to use ‘you’ in addressing his father or mother, also ‘me’ and ‘I’. But these changes are so momentous and epoch-making in the history of the young intelligence that they will have to be specially considered later on.
Like other children he showed a fine contempt for the grammatical distinctions of pronominal forms. Thus ‘me’ was used for ‘mine,’ ‘her’ for ‘she,’ ‘she’s’ for ‘hers,’ ‘him’ for ‘he’ and for ‘his,’ ‘us’ for ‘our,’ and so forth.[[310]] It is pretty clear that none of these solecisms was due to an imitation of others’ incorrect speech, and they appear to show the action of the principle of biological economy, a few word-sounds being made to do duty for a number of relations (e.g., in the use of ‘me’ for ‘my’), and familiar word-sounds being modified according to analogy of other modifications where older people use a quite new form (‘she’s’ for ‘hers’). A similar disposition to simplify and rationalise the tongue of his ancestors showed itself in the use of verbs. Thus, if his mother said, ‘Cliffy, you are not good,’ he would reply in a perfectly rational manner, “Yes, I are”. “It was odd,” writes the father, “to hear him bring out in solemn judge-like tones such terrible solecisms as ‘Him haven’t,’ yet there was a certain logical method in his lawlessness.” Another simplification on which he hit in common with other children was the use of ‘did’ as a sign of past tense, thus saving himself all the trouble of understanding the irregular behaviour of our verbs.[[311]]
One or two quaint applications of words are noted. Thus towards the end of the third month of this year he took to using ‘cover’ in a somewhat puzzling fashion. Thus he once pointed to the back of his hand and remarked, ‘No milk on this cover’. The father suspects that the term connoted for his consciousness an outside part or the outer surface of an object.