COMPARATIVE OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE ACQUIREMENT
OF SPEECH BY GERMAN AND FOREIGN CHILDREN.
Among the earlier as among the later statements concerning the acquirement of speech, there are several that have been put forth by writers on the subject without a sufficient basis of observed facts. Not only Buffon, but also Taine and his successors, have, from a few individual cases, deduced general propositions which are not of general application.
Good observations were first supplied in Germany by Berthold Sigismund in his pamphlet, "Kind und Welt" ("The Child and the World") (1856); but his observations were scanty.
He noted, as the first articulate sounds made by a child from Thüringen (Rudolstadt), ma, ba, bu, appa, ange, anne, brrr, arrr: these were made about the middle of the first three months.
Sigismund is of the opinion that this first lisping, or babbling, consists in the production of syllables with only two sounds, of which the consonant is most often the first; that the first consonants distinctly pronounced are labials; that the lips, brought into activity by sucking, are the first organs of articulation; but this conjecture lacks general confirmation.
In the second three months (in the case of one child in the twenty-third week, with other healthy children considerably earlier) were heard, for the first time, the loud and high crowing-sounds, uttered by the child spontaneously, jubilantly, with lively movements of the limbs that showed the waxing power of the muscles: the child seemed to take pleasure in making the sounds. The utterance of syllables, on the other hand, is at this period often discontinued for weeks at a time.
In the third quarter of the first year, the lisping or stammering was more frequent. New sounds were added: bä, fbu, fu; and the following were among those that were repeated without cessation, bäbäbä, dädädä; also adad, eded.
In the next three months the child manifested his satisfaction in any object by the independent sound ei, ei. The first imitations of sounds, proved to be such, were made after the age of eleven months. But it is more significant, for our comprehension of the process of learning to speak, that long before the boy tried to imitate words or gestures, viz., at the age of nine months, he distinguished accurately the words "father, mother, light, window, moon, lane"; for he looked, or pointed, at the object designated, as soon as one of these words was spoken.
And when, finally, imitation began, musical tones, e. g., F, C, were imitated sooner than the spoken sounds, although the former were an octave higher. And the ei, ei was repeated in pretty nearly the same tone or accent in which it had been pronounced for the child. Sneezing was not imitated till after fourteen months. The first word imitated by the child of his own accord (after fourteen months) was the cry "Neuback" (fresh-bake), as it resounded from the street; it was given back by the child, unsolicited, as ei-a. As late as the sixteenth month he replied to the word papa, just as he did to the word Ida, only with atta; yet he had in the mean time learned to understand "lantern, piano, stove, bird, nine-pin, pot"—in all, more than twenty words—and to indicate by a look the objects named; he had also learned to make the new imperfect sounds pujéh, pujéh, tupe tupe téh, ämmäm, atta, ho.
In the seventeenth month came in place of these sounds the babbled syllables mäm, mam, mad-am, a-dam, das; in the case of other children, syllables different from these. Children often say several syllables in quick succession, "then suddenly stop as if they were thinking of something new—actually strain, as if they must exert themselves to bring their organs to utterance, until at last a new sound issues, and then this is repeated like the clack of a mill." Along with this appears the frequent doubling of syllables, as in papa, mama.