Imbeciles also frequently command only short words and sentences or monosyllabic words and sounds, or, finally, they lack all articulate sound. Many microcephalous idiots babble words without understanding their meaning, like little children.
Echo-speech or Echolalia (Imitative Reflex Speech).—Children not yet able to frame a sentence correctly like to repeat the last word of a sentence they have heard; and this, according to my observations and researches, is so general that I am forced to call this echolalia a physiological transition stage. Of long words said to them, the children usually repeat only the last two syllables or the last syllable only. The feeble-minded also repeat monotonously the words and sentences said by a person in their neighborhood without showing an awakened attention, and in general without connecting any idea with what they say. (Romberg.)
Interjectional Speech.—Children sometimes have a fancy for speaking in interjections. They express vague ideas by single vowels (like ä), syllables (e. g., na, da), and combinations of syllables, and frequently call out aloud through the house meaningless sounds and syllables. D and W are as yet undeveloped.
Often, too, children imitate the interjections used by members of the family—hop! patsch, bauz! an interjectional echolalia. Many deranged persons express their feelings in like manner, in sounds, especially vowels, syllables, or sound-combinations resembling words, which are void of meaning or are associated merely with obscure ideas (Martini). Then D is connected with M only through L and S, and so through i and e.
Embolophrasia.—Many children, long after they have overcome acataphasia and agrammatism, delight in inserting between words sounds, syllables, and words that do not belong there; e. g., they double the last syllable of every word and put an eff to it: ich-ich-eff, bin in-eff, etc., or they make a kind of bleat between the words (Kussmaul); and, in telling a story, put extra syllables into their utterance while they are thinking.
Many adults likewise have the disagreeable habit of introducing certain words or meaningless syllables into their speech, where these do not at all belong; or they tack on diminutive endings to their words. The syllables are often mere sounds, like eh, uh; in many cases they sound like eng, ang (angophrasia—Kussmaul).
Palimphrasia.—Insane persons often repeat single sounds, syllables, or sentences, over and over without meaning; e. g., "I am-am-am-am."
"The phenomenon in many cases reminds us of children, who say or sing some word or phrase, a rhyme or little verse, so long continuously, like automata, that the by-standers can endure it no longer. It is often the ring of the words, often the sense, often both, by which the children are impressed. The child repeats them because they seem to him strange or very sonorous." (Kussmaul.)
Bradyphrasia.—The speech of people that are sad or sleepy, and of others whose mental processes are indolent, often drags along with tedious slowness; is also liable to be broken off abruptly. The speaker comes to a standstill. This is not to be confounded with bradyphasia or with bradyarthria or bradylalia (see above).
In children likewise the forming of the sentence takes a long time on account of the as yet slow rise and combination of ideas, and a simple narrative is only slowly completed or not finished at all, because the intellectual processes in the brain are too fatiguing.