That a child when he has reached a certain stage of intelligence would be able to make use of signs quite apart from example and education is what one might expect. Any one who has noticed how a young cat, completely isolated from the influence of example, will spontaneously hit on the gesture of touching the arm of a person sitting at a meal by way of asking to be fed, cannot be surprised that children should prove themselves capable of inventing signs. We know, too, that deaf-mutes will, self-prompted, develop among themselves an elaborate system of gesture-signs, and further express their feelings and desires by sounds, which though not heard by themselves may be understood by others and so serve as effective signs of their needs and wishes. The normal child, too, in spite of the powerful influences which go to make him adopt as signs the articulate sounds employed by others, shows a germ of unprompted and original sign-making. The earliest of such unlearnt signs are simple gesture-movements, such as stretching out the arms when the child desires to be taken by the nurse.[[62]] Nobody has suggested that these are learnt by imitation. The same is true of other familiar gesture-movements, which appear towards the end of the first year or later, as pulling your dress just as a dog does, when the child wants you to go with him, touching the chair when he wants you to sit down, or (as Darwin’s child did when just over a year) taking a bit of paper and pointing to the fire by way of signifying his wish to see the paper burnt. The gesture of pointing, though no doubt commonly aided by example, is probably capable of being reached instinctively as an outgrowth from the grasping movement.
These gesture-signs, I find, play a larger part in the case of children who are backward in talking, and so are nearer the condition of the deaf-mute. Thus a lady in sending me notes on her three children remarks that the one who was particularly backward in his speech made a free use of gesture-signs. When sixteen months old he had certain general signs of this sort, using a sniff as a sign of flower, and a mimic kiss as a sign of living things, i.e., all sorts of animals.[[63]]
Just as movements may thus be used instinctively, that is, without aid from others’ example, both as expressing simple feelings and desires, and also, as in the case just mentioned, as indicating ideas, so spontaneously formed sounds may be used as signs. As pointed out above the first self-prompted articulation is closely connected with feeling, and we find that in the second half-year when the preliminary practice has been gone through certain sounds take on a distinctly expressive function. Thus one little boy when eight months old habitually used the sound ‘ma-ma’ when miserable, and ‘da-da’ when pleased. Among these instinctive expressive sounds one of the most important is that indicative of hunger. I find again and again that a special sound is marked off as a mode of expression or sign of this craving. This fact will be referred to again presently.
True language-sounds significant of things grow out of this spontaneous expressive articulation. Thus the demonstrative sign da which accompanies the pointing, and which seems to be frequently used with slight modifications by German as well as by English children, is probably in its inception merely an interjectional expression of the faint shock of wonder produced by the appearance in the visual field of a new object. But used as a concomitant of the pointing gesture it takes on a demonstrative or indicative function, announcing the presence or arrival of an object in a particular locality or direction. A somewhat similar case is that of ‘ata’ or ‘tata,’ a sign used to denote the departure or disappearance of an object. These signs are, as Preyer shows, spontaneous and not imitative (e.g., of ‘there’ (da), ‘all gone’). This is confirmed by the fact that they vary greatly. Thus Preyer’s boy used for “there” ‘da,’ ‘nda,’ ‘nta,’ etc., and for “all gone” ‘atta,’ ‘f-tu,’ ‘tuff,’ etc. Again, Tiedemann’s boy used the sound ‘ah-ah,’ and one of Stanley Hall’s children the sound ‘eh,’ when pointing to an object. We may conclude then that there are spontaneous vocal reactions expressive of the contrasting mental states answering to the appearance or arrival and the disappearance or departure of an impressive and interesting object, and that, further, these reactions when recognised by others tend to become fixed as linguistic signs.[[64]]
Just as in the case of the gesture-movements, sniffing, kissing, so in that of expressive vocal sounds we may see a tendency to take on the function of true signs of ideas. One of the best illustrations of this is to be found in the invention of a word-sound for things to eat. I have pointed out that the state of hunger with its characteristic misery becomes at an early stage marked off by a distinctive expressive sign. At a later stage this or some other sound comes to be used intelligently as a means of asking for food. Darwin’s boy employed the sound mum in this way; another English child used ‘numby,’ and yet another ‘nini’; a French child observed by M. Taine made use of ‘ham’. The predominance of the labial m shows the early formation of these quasi-linguistic signs, and suggests that they were developed out of the primary instinctive ‘m’ sound.[[65]] Such sounds, coming to be understood by the nurse, tend to become fixed as modes of asking for food.
It seems but a step from the demand ‘Give me food’ to the pointing out or naming of things as food. And so good an observer as Darwin says that his boy used the sound ‘mum’ not only for conveying the demand or command ‘Give me food,’ but also as a substantive ‘food’ of wide application. He later went on to erect a rudimentary classification on the basis of this substantive, calling sugar ‘shu-mum’ and even breaking up this subdivision by calling liquorice “black shu-mum”.[[66]] This however seems, so far as I can ascertain, to be exceptional. In most vocabularies of children of two or three no generic term for food is found, though names for particular kinds of food, e.g., milk, bread, are in use. This agrees with the general order of development of thought-signs, the names of easily distinguished species appearing in the case of the individual as in that of the race before those of comprehensive and ‘abstract’ genera such as ‘food’. It is probable, therefore, that these early signs for food are but imperfectly developed into true thought-symbols or names. They retain much of their primordial character as expressions of desire and possibly of the volitional state answering to a command. This is borne out by the fact that the child spoken of by Taine used the sound ‘tem’ as a sort of general imperative for ‘give!’ ‘take!’ ‘look!’ etc.[[67]]
Another early example of an emotional expression passing into a germinal sign is that called forth at the sight of moving creatures. This acts as a strong stimulus to the baby brain, and vigorous muscular reactions, vocal and other, are wont to appear. One little boy of twelve and three-quarter months usually expressed his excitement by the sound “Dō-boo-boo,” which was used regularly for about ten days on the appearance of a dog, a horse, a bird, and so forth. Here we have a protoplasmic condition of the lingual organism which we call a name, a condition destined never to pass into another and higher. Sometimes, however, these explosives at the sight of animal life grow into comparatively fixed signs of recognition.
In this spontaneous invention of quasi-linguistic sounds imitation plays a considerable part. It is evident, indeed, that gestures are largely imitative. Thus the sniff and the mimic kiss referred to just now are plainly imitations of movements. The pointing gesture, too, may be said to be a kind of imitation of the reaching and appropriating movement of the arm. The sound ‘dō-boo-boo’ used on seeing an animal was probably imitative. According to Preyer the sounds called forth by the sight of moving objects, e.g., rolling balls and wheels, are imitative.[[68]] Whether the signs of hunger, ‘mum,’ ‘numby,’ are due to modifications of the movements carried out in sucking, seems to be more problematic.[[69]]
In certain cases imitation is the one sufficient source of the sound. In what are called onomatopoetic sounds the child seeks to mimic some natural sound, and such imitation is capable of becoming a fruitful source of original linguistic invention. A boy between nine and ten months imitated the sound of young roosters by drawing in his breath, and this noise became for a time a kind of name for any feathered creature, including small birds. More commonly such onomatopoetic sounds come to be distinctive recognition-signs of particular classes of animals, such as ‘oua-oua’ or ‘bow-wow’ for the dog, ‘moo-moo’ for the cow, ‘ouack-ouack’ or ‘kuack’ for the duck, and so forth.
It may, of course, be said that these mimic sounds are in part learnt from the traditional vocabulary of the nursery, in which the nurse takes good care to instruct the child. But it is to be remembered that the traditional nursery language itself is largely an adoption of children’s own sounds. There is, moreover, ample independent evidence to show that children are zealous and indefatigable imitators of the sounds they hear as of the movements they see. Towards the end of the first six months and during the second half-year a child is apt to imitate eagerly any sound you choose to produce before him. In the case of Preyer’s boy this impulse to repeat the sounds he heard developed into a kind of echoing mania. The acquisition of others’ language plainly depends on the existence and the vigour of this mimetic impulse. And this same impulse leads the child beyond the servile adoption of our conventional sounds to the invention of new or onomatopoetic sounds. Thus one little child discovered the pretty sound ‘tin-tin’ as a name for the bell. Another child, a girl, quite unprompted, used a chirping sound for a bird, and a curious clicking noise on seeing the picture of a horse (no doubt in imitation of the sound of a horse’s hoofs); while a little boy used a faint whistle to indicate a bird, and the sound ‘click-click’ to denote a horse. In some cases a grown-up person’s imitation of a sound is imitated. Thus a child of about two used the sound ‘afta’ as a name for drinking, and also for drinking-vessel, “in imitation of the sound of sucking in air which the nurse used to make when pretending to drink”.[[70]]