The association of a word with its meaning is accomplished for the child by a series of single incidents, and as many words are understood only by the help of the situation, it is natural that the exact force of many of them is not seized at once. A boy of 4.10, hearing that his father had seen the King, inquired, “Has he a head at both ends?”—his conception of a king being derived from playing-cards. Another child was born on what the Danes call Constitution Day, the consequence being that he confused birthday and Constitution Day, and would speak of “my Constitution Day,” and then his brother and sister also began to talk of their Constitution Day.
Hilary M. (2.0) and Murdoch D. (2.6) used dinner, breakfast and tea interchangeably—the words might be translated ‘meal.’ Other more or less similar confusions may be mentioned here. Tony F. (2.8) used the term sing for (1) reading, (2) singing, (3) any game in which his elders amused him. Hilary said indifferently, ‘Daddy, sing a story three bears,’ and ‘Daddy, tell a story three bears.’ She cannot remember which is knife and which is fork. Beth M. (2.6) always used can’t when she meant won’t. It meant simply refusal to do what she did not want to.
VI.—§ 5. Numerals. Time.
It is interesting to watch the way in which arithmetical notions grow in extent and clearness. Many children learn very early to say one, two, which is often said to them when they learn how to walk; but no ideas are associated with these syllables. In the same way many children are drilled to say three when the parents begin with one, two, etc. The idea of plurality is gradually developed, but a child may very well answer two when asked how many fingers papa has; Frans used the combinations some-two and some-three to express ‘more than one’ (2.4). At the age of 2.11 he was very fond of counting, but while he always got the first four numbers right, he would skip over 5 and 7; and when asked to count the apples in a bowl, he would say rapidly 1-2-3-4, even if there were only three, or stop at 3, even if there were five or more. At 3.4 he counted objects as far as 10 correctly, but might easily pass from 11 to 13, and if the things to be counted were not placed in a row he was apt to bungle by moving his fingers irregularly from one to another. When he was 3.8 he answered the question “What do 2 and 2 make?” quite correctly, but next day to the same question he answered “Three,” though in a doubtful tone of voice. This was in the spring, and next month I noted: “His sense of number is evidently weaker than it was: the open-air life makes him forget this as well as all the verses he knew by heart in the winter.” When the next winter came his counting exercises again amused him, but at first he was in a fix as before about any numbers after 6, although he could repeat the numbers till 10 without a mistake. He was fond of doing sums, and had initiated this game himself by asking: “Mother, if I have two apples and get one more, haven’t I then three?” His sense of numbers was so abstract that he was caught by a tricky question: “If you have two eyes and one nose, how many ears have you?” He answered at once, “Three!” A child thus seems to think in abstract numbers, and as he learns his numbers as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., not as one pear, two pears, three pears, one may well be skeptical about the justification for the recommendation made by many pedagogues that at an early stage of the school-life a child should learn to reckon with concrete things rather than with abstract numbers.
A child will usually be familiar with the sound of higher numerals long before it has any clear notion of what they mean. Frans (3.6) said, “They are coming by a train that is called four thirty-four,” and (4.4) he asked, “How much is twice hundred? Is that a thousand?”
A child’s ideas of time are necessarily extremely vague to begin with; it cannot connect very clear or very definite notions with the expressions it constantly hears others employ, such as ‘last Sunday,’ ‘a week ago,’ or ‘next year.’ The other day I heard a little girl say: “This is where we sat next time,” evidently meaning ‘last time.’ All observers of children mention the frequent confusion of words like to-morrow and yesterday, and the linguist remembers that Gothic gistradagis means ‘to-morrow,’ though it corresponds formally with E. yesterday and G. gestern.
VI.—§ 6. Various Difficulties.
Very small children will often say up both when they want to be taken up and when they want to be put down on the floor. This generally means nothing else than that they have not yet learnt the word down, and up to them simply is a means to obtain a change of position. In the same way a German child used hut auf for having the hat taken off as well as put on, but Meumann rightly interprets this as an undifferentiated desire to have something happen with the hat. But even with somewhat more advanced children there are curious confusions.
Hilary M. (2.0) is completely baffled by words of opposite meaning. She will say, “Daddy, my pinny is too hot; I must warm it at the fire.” She goes to the fire and comes back, saying, “That’s better; it’s quite cool now.” (The same confusion of hot and cold was also reported in the case of one Danish and one German child; cf. also Tracy, p. 134.) One morning while dressing she said, “What a nice windy day,” and an hour or two later, before she had been out, “What a nasty windy day.” She confuses good and naughty completely. Tony F. (2.5) says, “Turn the dark out.”
Sometimes a mere accidental likeness may prove too much for the child. When Hilary M. had a new doll (2.0) her mother said to her: “And is that your son?” Hilary was puzzled, and looking out of the window at the sun, said: “No, that’s my sun.” It was very difficult to set her out of this confusion.[20] Her sister Beth (3.8), looking at a sunset, said: “That’s what you call a sunset; where Ireland (her sister) is (at school) it’s a summerset.” About the same time, when staying at Longwood Farm, she said: “I suppose if the trees were cut down it would be Shortwood Farm?”