The child’s effort, on the whole, is directed toward attaining likeness to his model, whatever may be the difficulty, otherwise he would remain satisfied with his first effort when he found it understood. “Persistent imitation” constantly urges him on to improvement by repetition, constantly striving for betterment. Thus the power is gained to acquire new territory. The child’s enjoyment, too, of recognition constantly furnishes him with alluring models. This progressive method is directly opposed to natural inertia and indolence, which are so strong in some children that we occasionally find them not only satisfied with slipshod methods, but actually going back, after learning better, to the faulty pronunciation. This retrogression, too, is often playful.
We have space but for one illustration from the many which this subject affords; it relates to inventiveness in language imitation. We have already seen that the experimental play of infants (especially in reduplication) furnishes material for a science of language. The easily articulated syllables papa, mamma, baba, fafa, dada, etc., are sufficiently explained in the case of parents, who take them into their own vocabulary and thus confirm the child in their use. Many expressive words have originated in this way.[557] Darwin’s child said “mum” to signify eating or wanting to eat, and Strümpell’s daughter at ten months called all the birds that she saw from the window “tibu.”[558] Older children, too, often indulge in such playful experimental coining of words,[559] as we shall see later. At present we are more concerned with the word building founded on acoustic imitation. Preyer thinks that the only kind of word creation practised by children is the imitation of sounds which they have heard and their repetition in the form of interjections. I quote from him: “When the listener first imitates a word and then makes independent use of it depends with normal children principally on whether much effort is made to instruct them. More important psychogenetically ... are observations on the creation of words with a special sense before the beginning of genuine speech. These are not to be regarded as mistaken, imperfect, or onomatopœic imitations,... but rather as original interjections. In all my observations and studies directed especially to their investigation, I have been able to discover nothing tending to establish a connection of the hearer’s concepts with articulate sounds and syllables.... S. S. Haldemann has in his notes on the invention of words, which include a small boy’s discoveries in that line, citations from Taine, Holden, myself, and others. This boy called a cow “m,” a bell “tin-tin” (Holden’s boy said “ling-dong-mang” for a church bell), a locomotive “tschu-tschu,” the splash of something falling in water “boom,” and applied the same word to throwing, striking, falling, shooting, etc., without regard to the quality of the sound, though always with reference to some sound. In weighing the fact that a sound repeated to him, such as a trumpet call, was fitted with a word suggestive of the sound seems to show that an intelligent child attempts to imitate and repeat what he hears, despite the objection of a Max Müller, and until a better hypothesis is offered affords an object lesson in the study of the origin of language.”
Yet this theory is decidedly partial, for among primitive people, besides mamma, papa, adda, etc., other sounds depending on neither interjections nor imitation, but purely the result of experimentation, get a meaning from the simple relation of mother and child, and so attain at least a place in their vocabulary and surely form one of the grounds for the explanation of the growth of language. It is not maintained that the child first learns the art of imitating sound from his elders, for without doubt he is often the originator, as in the case of mamma and papa, which he has taught them. For us the interesting question here is that of recognition which we find again the object of playful activity. The “Bow-wow” theory sounds perhaps improbable, or even ridiculous when we think of its being used by adults,[560] but when confined to children all this is changed. It works somewhat in this way: The child learns through imitation to produce all sorts of sounds—the crash of falling objects, the rumble of rolling ones, cries of animals, the gurgling of water. His mother’s play with him adds to the value of such imitations, since in their play the imitative sound comes to stand for its object just as symbolism arises from the effort to express qualities. Imitation makes this intelligible, since every copy is a symbol of the thing copied. Even the interjection and the experimental sound can only be elements of speech by imitation or repetition. Thus Jodl rightly says (following Marty) of the imitation of sound, “As soon as their power of adjustment, their reason, is sufficiently developed, they derive from free play the means consciously employed for the acquisition of varied experience.”[561] Therefore I maintain that imitation is an indispensable condition in the explanation of the origin of language, its objects being threefold: (1) All the acoustic models afforded by the environment; (2) interjectional sounds; (3) experimental sounds. It is as assured a fact that children practise the first as that they playfully repeat their own experiments. Playful imitation of interjection is not to my knowledge indulged in by very young children, but using the sound to signify the thing from which it proceeds is natural enough. On the whole, then, it seems that while imitation plays an important part in the origin of language, as many investigators testify, to make it the only factor would be an act of presumption.
As this impulse for acoustic repetition is weaker in adults than in children, I need only mention the playful use of it in poetry where it is agreeable to all. I have already had occasion to remark that poetry written for children is especially rich in such imitation. Animal cries and bird notes figure largely. Rückert’s poem Aus der Iugendheit makes use of a very common metre to imitate the whirring call of the swallow, thus:
“Wenn ich weggeh’,:,:
Hab ich Kisten und Kasten voll;
Wenn ich wiederkomm’,:,:
Hab ich kein Fädchen Zwir-r-n.”[562]
“When I go away
I have trunks and boxes full;