It is not an uncommon case of confusion for a child to use ‘you’ and ‘your’ instead of ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘mine.’ The child has noticed that ‘will you have?’ means ‘will Jack have?’ so that he looks on ‘you’ as synonymous with his own name. In some children this confusion may last for some months. It is in some cases connected with an inverted word-order, ‘do you’ meaning ‘I do’—an instance of ‘echoism’ (see below). Sometimes he will introduce a further complication by using the personal pronoun of the third person, as though he had started the sentence with ‘Jack’—then ‘you have his coat’ means ‘I have my coat.’ He may even speak of the person addressed as ‘I.’ ‘Will I tell a story?’ = ‘Will you tell a story?’ Frans was liable to use these confused forms between the ages of two and two and a-half, and I had to quicken his acquaintance with the right usage by refusing to understand him when he used the wrong. Beth M. (2.6) was very jealous about her elder sister touching any of her property, and if the latter sat on her chair, she would shriek out: “That’s your chair; that’s your chair.”
The forms I and me are a common source of difficulty to English children. Both Tony E. (2.7 to 3.0) and Hilary M. (2.0) use my for me; it is apparently a kind of blending of me and I; e.g. “Give Hilary medicine, make my better,” “Maggy is looking at my,” “Give it my.” See also O’Shea, p. 81: ‘my want to do this or that; my feel bad; that is my pencil; take my to bed.’
His and her are difficult to distinguish: “An ill lady, his legs were bad” (Tony E., 3.3).
C. M. L. (about the end of her second year) constantly used wour and wours for our and ours, the connexion being with we, as ‘your’ with you. In exactly the same way many Danish children say vos for os on account of vi. But all this really falls under our next chapter.
VI.—§ 8. Extent of Vocabulary.
The number of words which the child has at command is constantly increasing, but not uniformly, as the increase is affected by the child’s health and the new experiences which life presents to him. In the beginning it is tolerably easy to count the words the child uses; later it becomes more difficult, as there are times when his command of speech grows with astonishing rapidity. There is great difference between individual children. Statistics have often been given of the extent of a child’s vocabulary at different ages, or of the results of comparing the vocabularies of a number of children.
An American child who was closely observed by his mother, Mrs. Winfield S. Hall, had in the tenth month 3 words, in the eleventh 12, in the twelfth 24, in the thirteenth 38, in the fourteenth 48, in the fifteenth 106, in the sixteenth 199, and in the seventeenth 232 words (Child Study Monthly, March 1897). During the first month after the same boy was six years old, slips of paper and pencils were distributed over the house and practically everything which the child said was written down. After two or three days these were collected and the words were put under their respective letters in a book kept for that purpose. New sets of papers were put in their places and other lists made. In addition to this, the record of his life during the past year was examined and all of his words not already listed were added. In this way his summer vocabulary was obtained; conversations on certain topics were also introduced to give him an opportunity to use words relating to such topics. The list is printed in the Journal of Childhood and Adolescence, January 1902, and is well worth looking through. It contains 2,688 words, apart from proper names and numerals. No doubt the child was really in command of words beyond that total.
This list perhaps is exceptional on account of the care with which it was compiled, but as a rule I am afraid that it is not wise to attach much importance to these tables of statistics. One is generally left in the dark whether the words counted are those that the child has understood, or those that it has actually used—two entirely different things. The passive or receptive knowledge of a language always goes far beyond the active or productive.
One also gets the impression that the observers have often counted up words without realizing the difficulties involved. What is to be counted as a word? Are I, me, we, us one word or four? Is teacup a new word for a child who already knows tea and cup? And so for all compounds. Is box (= a place at a theatre) the same word as box (= workbox)? Are the two thats in ‘that man that you see’ two words or one? It is clear that the process of counting involves so much that is arbitrary and uncertain that very little can be built on the statistics arrived at.