Many investigators have asserted that the child’s first utterances are not means of imparting information, but always an expression of the child’s wishes and requirements. This is certainly somewhat of an exaggeration, since the child quite clearly can make known its joy at seeing a hat or a plaything, or at merely being able to recognize it and remember the word for it; but the statement still contains a great deal of truth, for without strong feelings a child would not say much, and it is a great stimulus to talk that he very soon discovers that he gets his wishes fulfilled more easily when he makes them known by means of certain sounds.
Frans (1.7) was accustomed to express his longings in general by help of a long m with rising tone, while at the same time stretching out his hand towards the particular thing that he longed for. This he did, for example, at dinner, when he wanted water. One day his mother said, “Now see if you can say vand (water),” and at once he said what was an approach to the word, and was delighted at getting something to drink by that means. A moment later he repeated what he had said, and was inexpressibly delighted to have found the password which at once brought him something to drink. This was repeated several times. Next day, when his father was pouring out water for himself, the boy again said ‘van,’ ‘van,’ and was duly rewarded. He had not heard the word during the intervening twenty-four hours, and nothing had been done to remind him of it. After some repetitions (for he only got a few drops at a time) he pronounced the word for the first time quite correctly. The day after, the same thing occurred; the word was never heard but at dinner. When he became rather a nuisance with his constant cries for water, his mother said: “Say please”—and immediately came his “Bebe vand” (“Water, please”)—his first attempt to put two words together.
Later—in this formless period—the child puts more and more words together, often in quite haphazard order: ‘My go snow’ (‘I want to go out into the snow’), etc. A Danish child of 2.1 said the Danish words (imperfectly pronounced, of course) corresponding to “Oh papa lamp mother boom,” when his mother had struck his father’s lamp with a bang. Another child said “Papa hen corn cap” when he saw his father give corn to the hens out of his cap.
When Frans was 1.10, passing a post-office (which Danes call ‘posthouse’), he said of his own accord the Danish words for ‘post, house, bring, letter’(a pause between the successive words)—I suppose that the day before he had heard a sentence in which these words occurred. In the same month, when he had thrown a ball a long way, he said what would be in English ‘dat was good.’ This was not a sentence which he had put together for himself, but a mere repetition of what had been said to him, clearly conceived as a whole, and equivalent to ‘bravo.’ Sentences of this kind, however, though taken as units, prepare the way for the understanding of the words ‘that’ and ‘was’ when they turn up in other connexions.
One thing which plays a great rôle in children’s acquisition of language, and especially in their early attempts to form sentences, is Echoism: the fact that children echo what is said to them. When one is learning a foreign language, it is an excellent method to try to imitate to oneself in silence every sentence which one hears spoken by a native. By that means the turns of phrases, the order of words, the intonation of the sentence are firmly fixed in the memory—so that they can be recalled when required, or rather recur to one quite spontaneously without an effort. What the grown man does of conscious purpose our children to a large extent do without a thought—that is, they repeat aloud what they have just heard, either the whole, if it is a very short sentence, or more commonly the conclusion, as much of it as they can retain in their short memories. The result is a matter of chance—it need not always have a meaning or consist of entire words. Much, clearly, is repeated without being understood, much, again, without being more than half understood. Take, for example (translated):
Shall I carry you?—Frans (1.9): Carry you.
Shall Mother carry Frans?—Carry Frans.
The sky is so blue.—So boo.
I shall take an umbrella.—Take rella.
Though this feature in a child’s mental history has been often noticed, no one seems to have seen its full significance. One of the acutest observers (Meumann, p. 28) even says that it has no importance in the development of the child’s speech. On the contrary, I think that Echoism explains very much indeed. First let us bear in mind the mutilated forms of words which a child uses: ’chine for machine, ’gar for cigar, Trix for Beatrix, etc. Then a child’s frequent use of an indirect form of question rather than direct, ‘Why you smoke, Father?’ which can hardly be explained except as an echo of sentences like ‘Tell me why you smoke.’ This plays a greater rôle in Danish than in English, and the corresponding form of the sentence has been frequently remarked by Danish parents. Another feature which is nearly constant with Danish children at the age when echoing is habitual is the inverted word order: this is used after an initial adverb (nu kommer hun, etc.), but the child will use it in all cases (kommer hun, etc.). Further, the extremely frequent use of the infinitive, because the child hears it towards the end of a sentence, where it is dependent on a preceding can, or may, or must. ‘Not eat that’ is a child’s echo of ‘You mustn’t eat that.’ In German this has become the ordinary form of official order: “Nicht hinauslehnen” (“Do not lean out of the window”).