[71]. The concerted cries during co-operative work to which Noirée ascribes the origin of language-sounds would seem, while having a special physiological cause as concomitant and probably auxiliary motor processes, to be analogous at least to emotional cries, in so far as they spring out of a peculiar condition of feeling, that of effort. On the other hand, as concerted they came under the head of imitative movements. So far as I can learn the nursery supplies no analogies to these utterances.
[72]. His brother when one year old called his nurse, whose real name was Maud, Bur, which was probably a rough rendering of ‘nurse’.
[73]. For a summary of Professor Hale’s researches see Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 138 ff.
[74]. Of course, as Max Müller says (The Science of Language, i., p. 481 f.), the facts ascertained do not prove that ‘infants left to themselves would invent a language’. The influence of example, the appeal to the imitative impulse, has been at work before the inventions appear. Yet they do, I think, show that they have the sign-making instinct, and might develop this to some extent even were the educative influence of others’ language removed.
[75]. Preyer’s boy gave the first distinct imitative response to articulate sound in the eleventh month. This is, so far as I can ascertain, behind the average attainment.
[76]. Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 71.
[77]. In the reduction of ‘Constance’ to ‘tun’ the same thing is seen, for this child uniformly turned k’s into t’s. Cf. Preyer, op. cit., p. 397.
[78]. It has been pointed out to me by Dr. Postgate that the secondary stress on the first syllable of English words over four syllables (and some four-syllabled words) may assist in impressing the first syllable.
[79]. Recent psychological experiments show that similar influences are at work when a person attempts to repeat a long series of verbal sounds, say ten or twelve nonsense syllables. Initial or final position or accent may favour the reproduction of a member of such a series.
[80]. Here again we see a similarity between a child’s repetition of a name heard, and an adult’s attempt to repeat a long series of syllabic sounds. In the latter case also there is a general tendency to preserve the length and rhythmic form of the whole series.