| Adieu | Guten Tag | Fort | Ja | Nein | |
| (good-day) | (away) | (yes) | (no) | ||
| S. | adé | tag | fot | ja | nein |
| P. | adjee | tatach | wott | ja; jaja | neinein |
| Grossmutter | Kuk | Zucker | Karl | Grete | |
| (grandmother) | (sugar) | ||||
| { | tosutte | o-tute | zucke | all | ete |
| S.{ | abutte | ||||
| { | osmutte |
| P.{ | a-mama | kuk | ucka | kara | dete |
| { | e-mama |
Sigismund noticed the following names of animals (in imitation of words given to the children): bä, put, gikgak, wäkwäk, huhu, ihz (Hinz). I did not find these with my child. Sigismund likewise observed baie-baie for Wiege (cradle), which my child was not acquainted with; päpä for verborgen (hidden); eichönten for Eichhörnchen (squirrel); äpften for Äpfelchen (little apple); mädsen and mädis for Mädchen (girl); atatt for Bernhard; hundis for Hundchen, the Thüringian form of Hündchen (little dog); pot for Topf (pot); dot for dort (yonder). On the other hand, both children used wehweh for Schmerz (pain); caput for zerbrochen (broken to pieces); schoos, sooss for "auf den Schooss möcht ich" (I want to get up in the lap); auf for "hinauf möchte ich gehoben werden" (I want to be taken up); toich for Storch (stork); tul for Stuhl (chair). A third child in my presence called his grandmother mama-mama, i. e., twice-mamma, in distinction from the mother. This, however, does not necessarily imply a gift for invention, as the expression "Mamma's Mamma" may have been used of the grandmother in speaking to the child.
Other children of the same age do very much the same. The boy D, though he repeated cleverly what was said, was not good at naming objects when he was expected to do this of himself. He would say, e. g., pilla for Spiegel (mirror). At this same period (twenty-five months) he could not yet give the softened or liquid sound of consonants (mouilliren). He said n and i and a very plainly, and also i-a, but not nja, and not once "ja"; but, on the contrary, always turned away angrily when his father or I, or others, required it of him. But as late as the twenty-eighth month echolalia was present in the highest degree in this very vigorous and intelligent child, for he would at times repeat mechanically the last word of every sentence spoken in his hearing, and even a single word, e. g., when some one asked "Warum?" (why) he likewise said warum without answering the question, and he continued to do it for days again and again in a vacant way, with and without the tone of interrogation (which he did not understand). From this we see again plainly that the imitation of sounds is independent of the understanding of them, but is dependent on the functions of articulation.
These functions are discussed by themselves in the work of Prof. Fritz Schultze, of Dresden, "Die Sprache des Kindes" ("The Language of the Child," Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the "principle of the least effort." He thinks the child begins with the sounds that are made with the least physiological effort, and proceeds gradually to the more difficult sounds, i. e., those which require more "labor of nerve and muscle." This "law" is nothing else than the "loi du moindre effort" which is to be traced back to Maupertuis, and which was long ago applied to the beginnings of articulation in children: e. g., by Buffon in 1749 ("Œuvres complètes," Paris, 1844, iv, pp. 68, 69), and, in spite of Littré, again quite recently by B. Perez[F] ("Les trois premières Années de l'Enfant," Paris, 1878, pp. 228-230, seq.) But this supposed "law" is opposed by many facts which have been presented in this chapter and the preceding one. The impossibility of determining the degree of "physiological effort" required for each separate sound in the child, moreover, is well known. Besides, every sound may be produced with very unequal expenditure of force; but the facts referred to are enough for refutation of the theory. According to Schultze, e. g., the vowels ought, in the process of development of the child's speech, to appear in the following order, separated in time by long intervals: 1. Ä; 2. A; 3. U; 4. O; 5. E; 6. I; 7. Ö; 8. Ü. It is correct that ä is one of the vowels that may be first plainly distinguished; but neither is it the first vowel audible—on the contrary, the first audible vowel is indistinct, and imperfectly articulated vowels are the first—nor can we admit that ä is produced with less of effort than is a. The reverse is the case. Further, ö is said to present "enormous difficulties," and hence has the place next to the last; but I have often heard the ö, short and long, perfectly pure in the second month, long before the i, and that not in my child alone. From the observations upon the latter, the order of succession appears to be the following: Indeterminate vowels, u, ä, a, ö, o, ai, ao, i, e, ü, oeu (French sound in cœur), au, oi. Thus, for the above eight vowels, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, the order 3, 1, 2, 7, 4, 6, 5, 8, so that only i and ü keep their place. But other children give a varying order, and these differences in the order of succession of vowels as well as of consonants will certainly not be referred to the "influence of heredity." Two factors of quite another sort are, on the contrary, to be taken into account here in the case of every normal child without exception, apart from the unavoidable errors in every assigned order growing out of incomplete observation. In the earliest period and when the babbling monologues begin, the cavity of the mouth takes on an infinitely manifold variety of forms—the lips, tongue, lower jaw, larynx, are moved, and in a greater variety of ways than ever afterward. At the same time there is expiration, often loud expiration, and thus originates entirely at random sometimes one sound, sometimes another. The child hears sounds and tones new to him, hears his own voice, takes pleasure in it, and delights in making sounds, as he does in moving his limbs in the bath. It is natural that he should find more pleasure in some sounds, in others less. The first are more frequently made by him on account of the motor memories that are associated with the acoustic memories, and an observer does not hear the others at all if he observes the child only from time to time. In fact, however, almost all simple sounds, even the most difficult, are formed in purity before they are used in speaking in the first eight months—most frequently those that give the child pleasure, that satisfy his desires, or lessen his discomfort. It is not to be forgotten that even the ä, which requires effort on account of the drawing back and spreading out of the tongue, diminishes discomfort. The fretful babe feels better when he cries u-ä than when he keeps silent. The second factor is determined by the surroundings of the child. Those sounds which the child distinctly hears he will be able to imitate correctly sooner than he will other sounds: but he will be in condition to hear most correctly, first of all, the sounds that are most frequent, just because these most frequently excite the auditory nerve and its tract in the brain; secondly, among these sounds that are acoustically most sharply defined, viz., first the vowels, then the resonants (m, n, ng); last, the compound "friction-sounds" (fl, schl). But it is only in part that the surroundings determine this order of succession for the sounds. Another thing that partly determines and modifies this order is the child's own unwearied practice in forming consonant-sounds. He hears his own voice now better than he did at an earlier period when he was forming vowels only. He most easily retains and repeats, among the infinitely manifold consonants that are produced by loud expiration, those which have been distinctly heard by him. This is owing to the association of the motor and the acoustic memory-image in the brain. These are the most frequent in his speech. Not until later does the mechanical difficulty of articulation exert an influence, and this comes in at the learning of the compound sounds. Hence there can not be any chronological order of succession of sounds that holds good universally in the language of the child, because each language has a different order in regard to the frequency of appearance of the sounds; but heredity can have no influence here, because every child of average gifts, though it may hear from its birth a language unknown to its ancestors, if it hears no other, yet learns to speak this language perfectly. What is hereditary is the great plasticity of the entire apparatus of speech, the voice, and with it a number of sounds that are not acquired, as m. An essential reason for the defective formation of sounds in children born deaf is the fact that they do not hear their own voice. This defect may also be hereditary.
The treatise of F. Schultze contains, besides, many good remarks upon the technique of the language of the child, but, as they are of inferior psychogenetic interest, they need not be particularly mentioned here. Others of them are only partially confirmed by the observations, as is shown by a comparison with what follows.
Gustav Lindner ("Twelfth Annual Report of the Lehrer-seminars at Zschopau," 1882, p. 13) heard from his daughter, in her ninth week, arra or ärrä, which was uttered for months. Also äckn appeared early. The principle of the least effort Lindner finds to be almost absolutely refuted by his observations. He rightly remarks that the frequent repetitions of the same groups of sounds, in the babbling monologues, are due in part to a kind of pleasure in success, such as urges adults also to repeat their successful efforts. Thus his child used to imitate the reading of the newspaper (in the second half-year) by degattegattegatte. In the eleventh and twelfth months the following were utterances of hers in repeating words heard: ómama, oia (Rosa), batta (Bertha), ächard (Richard), wiwi (Friedchen), agga (Martha), olla olla (Olga, her own name). Milch (milk) she called mimi, Stuhl (chair) tuhl, Laterne (lantern), katonne, the whistle of an engine in a neighboring factory, wuh (prolonged, onomatopoetic), Paul, gouch, danke (thank you), dagn or dagni, Baum (tree), maum. Another child substituted u for i and e, saying hund for "Kind," and uluwant for "Elephant"; thus, ein fomme hund lass wäde much for "ein frommes Kind lass werden mich" (let me become a pious child). Lindner's child, however, called "werden" not wäde but wegen; and "turnen" she called tung, "blau" balau. At the end of the second year no sound in the German language presented difficulties to the child. Her pronunciation was, however, still incorrect, for the correct pronunciation of the separate sounds does not by any means carry with it the pronunciation of them in their combinations. This remark of Lindner's is directly to the point, and is also confirmed, as I find, by the first attempts of the child of four years to read a word after having learned the separate letters. The learning of the correct pronunciation is also delayed by the child's preference of his original incorrect pronunciation, to which he is accustomed, and which is encouraged by imitations of it on the part of his relatives. Lindner illustrates this by good examples. His child continued to say mimela after "Kamilla" was easy for him. Not till the family stopped saying it did "Kamilla" take its place. At the age of three and a half years the child still said gebhalten for "behalten" and vervloren for "verloren," as well as gebhüte for "behüte." "Grosspapa" was called successively opapa, gropapa, grosspapa. Grossmama had a corresponding development. "Fleisch" (meat) was first called jeich, then leisch; "Kartoffeln" (potatoes) kaffom, then kaftoffeln; "Zschopau" sopau, schodau, tschopau; "Sparbüchse" (savings-box) babichse, spabichse, spassbüchse, sparzbüchse; "Häring" (herring, also gold-fish) hänging. A sound out of the second syllable goes into the first. The first question, isn das? from "Was ist denn das?" (what is that, pray?) was noticed in the twentieth month; the interrogative word was? (what) in the twenty-second month. Wo? (where) and Wohin? (whither) had the same meaning (that of the French où?), and this as late as in the fourth year. The word "Ich" (I) made its appearance in the thirtieth month. As to verbs, it is to be mentioned that, with the child at two years of age, before the use of the tenses there came the special word denoting activity in general: thus he said, when looking at a head of Christ by Guido Reni, thut beten, instead of "betet" ("does pray," instead of "prays"). The verb "sein" (be) was very much distorted: Warum warst du nicht fleissig gebist? (gebist for gewesen) (why have you not been industrious?). (Cf., pp. 172, 177.) He inflected bin, binst (for bist), bint (ist), binn (sind), bint (sind and seid), binn (sind). Further, wir isn (wir sind, we are), and nun sei ich ruhig (sei for bin) (now I am quiet), and ich habe nicht ruhig geseit (habe for "bin" and geseit for "gewesen") (I have not been quiet), are worthy of note, because they show how strong an influence in the formation of words during the transition period is exerted by the forms most frequently heard—here the imperative. The child used first of all the imperative; last the subjunctive. The superlative and comparative were not used by this child until the fourth year.
The observations of Lindner (edited anew in the periodical "Kosmos" for 1882) are among the best we have.
In the case of four brothers and sisters, whose mother, Frau Dr. Friedemann, of Berlin, has most kindly placed at my disposal trustworthy observations concerning them, the first articulate sounds heard were ärä, hägä, äche, and a deep guttural, rattling or snarling sound (Schnarren); but the last was heard from only one of the children.