The child at first tends to treat all verbs on the analogy of love, loved, loved, or kiss, kissed, kissed, thus catched, buyed, frowed for ‘caught, bought, threw or thrown,’ etc., but gradually it learns the irregular forms, though in the beginning with a good deal of hesitation and confusion, as done for ‘did,’ hunged for ‘hung,’ etc. O’Shea gives among other sentences (p. 94): “I drunked my milk.” “Budd swunged on the rings.” “Grandpa boughted me a ring.” “I caughted him.” “Aunt Net camed to-day.” “He gaved it to me”—in all of which the irregular form has been supplemented with the regular ending.
A little Danish incident may be thus rendered in English. The child (4.6): “I have seed a chestnut.” “Where have you seen it?” He: “I seen it in the garden.” This shows the influence of the form last heard.
I once heard a French child say “Il a pleuvy” for ‘plu’ from ‘pleuvoir.’ Other analogical forms are prendu for ‘pris’; assire for ‘asseoir’ (from the participle assis), se taiser for ‘se taire’ (from the frequent injunction taisez-vous). Similar formations are frequent in all countries.
VII.—§ 4. Degrees of Consciousness.
Do the little brains think about these different forms and their uses? Or is the learning of language performed as unconsciously as the circulation of the blood or the process of digestion? Clearly they do not think about grammatical forms in the way pursued in grammar-lessons, with all the forms of the same word arranged side by side of one another, with rules and exceptions. Still there is much to lead us to believe that the thing does not go of itself without some thinking over. The fact that in later years we speak our language without knowing how we do it, the right words and phrases coming to us no one knows how or whence, is no proof that it was always so. We ride a bicycle without giving a thought to the machine, look around us, talk with a friend, etc., and yet there was a time when every movement had to be mastered by slow and painful efforts. There would be nothing strange in supposing that it is the same with the acquisition of language.
Of course, it would be idle to ask children straight out if they think about these things, and what they think. But now and then one notices something which shows that at an early age they think about points of grammar a good deal. When Frans was 2.9, he lay in bed not knowing that anyone was in the next room, and he was heard to say quite plainly: “Små hænder hedder det—lille hånd—små hænder—lille hænder, næ små hænder.” (“They are called small hands—little hand—small hands—little hands, no, small hands”: in Danish lille is not used with a plural noun.) Similar things have been related to me by other parents, one child, for instance, practising plural forms while turning over the leaves of a picture-book, and another one, who was corrected for saying nak instead of nikkede (‘nodded’), immediately retorted “Stikker stak, nikker nak,” thus showing on what analogy he had formed the new preterit. Frequently children, after giving a form which their own ears tell them is wrong, at once correct it: ‘I sticked it in—I stuck it in.’
A German child, not yet two, said: “Papa, hast du mir was mitgebringt—gebrungen—gebracht?” almost at a breath (Gabelentz), and another (2.5) said hausin, but then hesitated and added: “Man kann auch häuser sagen” (Meringer).
VII.—§ 5. Word-formation.
In the forming of words the child’s brain is just as active. In many cases, again, it will be impossible to distinguish between what the child has heard and merely copied and what it has itself fashioned to a given pattern. If a child, for example, uses the word ‘kindness,’ it is probable that he has heard it before, but it is not certain, because he might equally well have formed the word himself. If, however, we hear him say ‘kindhood,’ or ‘kindship,’ or ‘wideness,’ ‘broadness,’ ‘stupidness,’ we know for certain that he has made the word up himself, because the resultant differs from the form used in the language he hears around him. A child who does not know the word ‘spade’ may call the tool a digger; he may speak of a lamp as a shine. He may say it suns when the sun is shining (cf. it rains), or ask his mother to sauce his pudding. It is quite natural that the enormous number of nouns and verbs of exactly the same form in English (blossom, care, drink, end, fight, fish, ape, hand, dress, etc.) should induce children to make new verbs according to the same pattern; I quote a few of the examples given by O’Shea: “I am going to basket these apples.” “I pailed him out” (took a turtle out of a washtub with a pail). “I needled him” (put a needle through a fly).
Other words are formed by means of derivative endings, as sorrified, lessoner (O’Shea 32), flyable (able to fly, Glenconner 3); “This tooth ought to come out, because it is crookening the others” (a ten-year-old, told me by Professor Ayres). Compound nouns, too, may be freely formed, such as wind-ship, eye-curtain (O’Shea), a fun-copy of Romeo and Juliet (travesty, Glenconner 19). Bryan L. (ab. 5) said springklers for chrysalises (‘because they wake up in the spring’).