II. DYSPHRASIA (DYSLOGICAL DISTURBANCES OF
SPEECH).
The child that can already speak pretty correctly deforms his speech after the manner of insane persons, being moved by strange caprices, because his understanding is not yet sufficiently developed.
Logorrhœa (Loquaciousness).—It is a regular occurrence with children that their pleasure in articulation and in vocal sound often induces them to hold long monologues, sometimes in articulate sounds and syllables, sometimes not. This chattering is kept up till the grown people present are weary, and that by children who can not yet talk; and their screaming is often interrupted only by hoarseness, just as in the case of the polyphrasia of the insane.
Dysphrasia of the Melancholy.—Children exert themselves perceptibly in their first attempts to speak, answer indolently or not at all, or frequently with embarrassment, always slowly, often with drawl and monotone, very frequently coming to a stop. They also sometimes begin to speak, and then lose at once the inclination to go on.
Dysphrasia of the Delirious (Wahnsinnigen).—Children that have begun to speak often make new words for themselves. They have already invented signs before this; they are also unintelligible often-times because they use the words they have learned in a different sense.
Dysphrasia of the Insane (Verrückten).—The child is not yet prepared to speak. He possesses only non-co-ordinated sounds and isolated rudiments of words, primitive syllables, roots, as the primitive raw material of the future speech.
In many insane persons only the disconnected remains or ruins of their stock of words are left, so that their speech resembles that of the child at a certain stage.
Dysphrasia of the Feeble-minded.—The child at first reacts only upon strong impressions, and that often indolently and clumsily and with outcry; later, upon impressions of ordinary strength, without understanding—laughing, crowing, uttering disconnected syllables.
So the patient reacts either upon strong impressions only, and that indolently, bluntly, with gestures that express little and with rude words, or he still reacts upon impressions of ordinary strength, but in flat, silly, disconnected utterances.
Dysphrasia of Idiots.—Children have command at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without understanding their meaning, like parrots.