Of the ten positions of the mouth required for all the consonants of the alphabet, nine are taken by the child within the first six months:[*]

Months.
1. Indefinite vowels;ä u,uä
2. a, ö, o; m,
g, r, t; h,		am, ma, ta, hu, ör, rö, ar, ra, gö.
3. i; b, l, n, ua, oa, ao, ai, e͡i, oä, äo, äa, äö; öm, in, ab, om; la, ho, mö, nä, na, ha, bu; ng, mb, gr.
4. e,ä͡u, a-u, aö, ea; an; na, tö, la, me; nt.
5. ü (y); k,ag, eg, ek, ge, kö.
6. j; the lingual-labial sound,oi (e͡u, ä͡u), io, öe, eu (French); ij, aj, ög, ich; ja, jä; rg, br, ch.
7. d, p,;e, ui; mä.
8.eö, aë, ou, a͡u; up; hö, mi, te.
9.ap, ach, äm; pa, ga, cha.
10.el, ab, at, ät; dä, ba, ta, tä; nd.
11.ad, al, ak, er, ej, öd; da, gä, bä, ka, ke, je, he, ne; pr, tr.
12. w,än, op, ew, är; de, wä; nj, ld.
13. s (ss),en; hi; dn.
14.mu; kn, gn, kt.
15. z,oö, öa, is, iss, es, ass, th (English), ith (Engl.), it; hä,
di, wa, sse.
16. f (v),ok, on; do, go; bw, fp.
17.ib, öt, an; bi.
18.äi, iä; äp, im; tu, pä; ft.
19.ön, et, es; sa, be; st, tth (Engl.), s-ch, sj.
20.ub, ot, id, od, oj, uf, ät; bo, ro, jo; dj, dth (Engl.).
21.öp; fe; rl, dl, nk, pt.
22.ol; lo; ps, pt, tl, sch, tsch, pth (Engl.).
23. q,uo; id, op, um, em, us, un, ow, ed, uk, ig, il; jö, ju,
po, mo, wo, fa, fo, fi, we, ku (qu), li, ti; tn, pf, gch,
gj, tj, schg.
24.ut, esch; pu, wi, schi, pi.
25.oë, ul, il, och, iw, ip, ur; lt, rb, rt.
26.nl, ds, mp, rm, fl, kl, nch, ml, dr.
27. x,kch, cht, lch, ls, sw, sl.

[*]Pronounce the letters in the tabular view as in German.

Every such chronological view of the sequence of sounds is uncertain, because we can not observe the child uninterruptedly, and hence the first appearance of a new sound easily escapes notice. The above synopsis has a chronological value only so far as this, that it announces, concerning every single sound, that such sound was heard in its purity by me at least as early as the given month. The sound may, however, have been uttered considerably earlier without my hearing it. I know from personal experience that in other children many sounds appear much earlier; in my child, e. g., ngä was observed too late, and I have no doubt that the first utterance of f and w was unobserved, although I was on the lookout for them. When it is maintained, on the contrary, that m is not heard from a normal child until the tenth month, then the am and mö which appear universally in the first half-year have escaped notice. Earlier tabular views of this sort, which have even served as a foundation for instruction of deaf-mutes in speaking, do not rest exclusively on observation. Besides, in this matter, even two children hardly agree. According to my observations, I am compelled in spite of this disagreement to lay down the proposition as valid for all healthy children, that the greatly preponderating majority of the sounds the child makes use of after learning verbal language, and many other sounds besides these, are correctly formed by him within the first eight months, not intentionally, but just as much at random as any other utterance of sound not to be used later in speech, not appearing in any civilized language. I will only mention as an example the labio-lingual explosive sound, in which the tip of the tongue comes between the lips and, with an expiration, bursting from its confinement is drawn back swiftly (with or without tone). All children seem to like to form this sound, a sound between p, b, and t, d; but it exists in few languages.

Among the innumerable superfluous, unintentional, random, muscular movements of the infant, the movements of the muscles of the larynx, mouth, and tongue take a conspicuous place, because they ally themselves readily with acoustic effects and the child takes delight in them. It is not surprising, therefore, that precisely those vibrations of the vocal cords, precisely those shapings of the cavity of the mouth, and those positions of the lips, often occur which we observe in the utterance of our vowels, and that among the child-noises produced unconsciously and in play are found almost all our consonants and, besides, many that are used in foreign languages. The plasticity of the apparatus of speech in youth permits the production of a greater abundance of sounds and sound-combinations than is employed later, and not a single child has been observed who has, in accordance with the principle of the least effort (principe du moindre effort) applied by French authors to this province, advanced in regular sequence from the sounds articulated easily—i. e., with less activity of will—to the physiologically difficult; rather does it hold good for all the children I have observed, and probably for all children that learn to speak, that many of the sounds uttered by them at the beginning, in the speechless season of infancy, without effort and then forgotten, have to be learned afresh at a later period, have to be painstakingly acquired by means of imitation.

Mobility and perfection in the technique of sound-formation are not speech. They come into consideration in the process of learning to speak as facilitating the process, because the muscles are perfected by previous practice; but the very first attempts to imitate voluntarily a sound heard show how slight this advantage is. Even those primitive syllables which the child of himself often pronounces to weariness, like da, he can not at the beginning (in the tenth month in my case) as yet say after any one, although he makes manifest by his effort—a regular strain—by his attention, and his unsuccessful attempts, that he would like to say them, as I have already mentioned. The reason is to be looked for in the still incomplete development of the sensori-motor central paths. In place of tatta is sounded tä or ata; in place of papa even taï, and this not once only, but after a great many trials repeated again and again with the utmost patience. That the sound-image has been correctly apprehended is evident from the certainty with which the child responds correctly in various cases by gestures to words of similar sound unpronounceable by him. Thus, he points by mistake once only to the mouth (Mund) instead of the moon (Mond), and points correctly to the ear (Ohr) and the clock (Uhr) when asked where these objects are. The acuteness of hearing indispensable for repeating the sounds is therefore present before the ability to repeat.

On the whole, the infant or the young child already weaned must be placed higher at this stage of his mental development than a very intelligent animal, but not on account of his knowledge of language, for the dog also understands very well single words in the speech of his master, in addition to hunting-terms. He divines, from the master's looks and gestures, the meaning of whole sentences, and, although he has not been brought to the point of producing articulate sounds, yet much superior in this respect is the performance of the cockatoo, which learns all articulate sounds. A child who shows by looks and gestures and actions that he understands single words, and who already pronounces correctly many words by imitation without understanding them, does not on this account stand higher intellectually than a sagaciously calculating yet speechless elephant or an Arabian horse, but because he already forms many more and far more complex concepts.

The animal phase of intellect lasts, in the sound, vigorous, and not neglected child, to the end of the first year of life at the farthest; and long before the close of this he has, by means of the feelings of pleasure and of discomfort, very definitely distinguishable by him even in the first days of life, but for which he does not get the verbal expressions till the second and third year, formed for himself at least in one province, viz., that of food, ideas more or less well defined. Romanes also rightly remarks that the concept of food arises in us through the feeling of hunger quite independently of language. Probably this concept is the very first that is formed by the quite young infant, only he would not name it "food," if indeed he named it at all, but would understand by it everything that puts an end to the feeling of hunger. It is of great importance to hold firmly to this fact of the origination of ideas, and that not of sensuous percepts only but of concepts, without language, because it runs contrary to prevailing assumptions.

He who has conscientiously observed the mental development of infants must come to the conclusion that the formation of ideas is not bound up with the learning of words, but is a necessary prerequisite for the understanding of the words to be learned first, and therefore for learning to speak. Long before the child understands even a single word, before he uses a single syllable consistently with a definite meaning, he already has a number of ideas which are expressed by looks and gestures and cries. To these belong especially ideas gained through touch and sight. Associations of objects touched and seen with impressions of taste are probably the first generators of concepts. The child, still speechless and toothless, takes a lively interest in bottles; sees, e. g., a bottle that is filled with a white opaque liquid (Goulard water), and he stretches out his arms with desire toward it, screaming a long time, in the belief that it is a milk-bottle (observed by me in the case of my child in the thirty-first week). The bottle when empty or when filled with water is not so long attractive to him, so that the idea of food (or of something to drink, something to suck, something sweet) must arise from the sight of a bottle with certain contents without the understanding or even utterance of any words. The formation of concepts without words is actually demonstrated by this; for the speechless child not only perceived the points of identity of the various bottles of wine, water, oil, the nursing-bottle and others, the sight of which excited him, but he united in one notion the contents of the different sorts of bottles when what was in them was white—i. e., he had separated the concept of food from that of the bottle. Ideas are thus independent of words.