From all this it results, in relation to the question, how the child comes to learn and to use words, that in the first place he has ideas; secondly, he imitates sounds, syllables, and words spoken for him; and, thirdly, he associates the ideas with these. e. g., the idea "white+wet+sweet+warm" having arisen out of frequent seeing, feeling, and tasting of milk, it depends upon what primitive syllable is selected for questioning the hungry infant, for talking to him, or quieting him, whether he expresses his desire for food by möm, mimi, nana, ning, or maman, or mäm, or mem, or mima, or yet other syllables. The oftener he has the idea of food (i. e., something that banishes hunger or the unpleasant feeling of it), and at the same time the sound-impression "milk," so much the more will the latter be associated with the former, and in consideration of the great advantages it offers, in being understood by all, will finally be adopted. Thus the child learns his first words. But in each individual case the first words acquired in this manner have a wider range of meaning than the later ones.
By means of pure echolalia, without associating ideas with the word babbled in imitation, the child learns, to be sure, to articulate words likewise; but he does not learn to understand them or to use them properly unless coincidences, intentional or accidental, show him this or that result when this or that word is uttered by him. If the child, e. g., hearing the new word "Schnee," says, as an echo, nee, and then some one shows him actual snow, the meaningless nee becomes associated with a sense-intuition; and later, also, nothing can take the place of the intuition—i. e., the direct, sensuous perception—as a means of instruction. This way of learning the use of words is exactly the opposite of that just discussed, and is less common because more laborious. For, in the first case, the idea is first present, and only needs to be expressed (through hearing the appropriate word). In the second case, the word comes first, and the idea has to be brought in artificially. Later, the word, not understood, awakens curiosity, and thereby generates ideas. But this requires greater maturity.
The third way in which the first words are learned is this: The idea and the word appear almost simultaneously, as in onomatopoetic designations and interjections. Absolutely original onomatopoetic words are very rare with children, and have not been observed by me except after the children already knew some words. The names of animals, bow-wow, moo-moo, peep-peep (bird), hotto (horse), from the expression of the carter, "hott-ho" ("tt," instead of Haut (the skin), i. e., "left," in contrast with "aarr"—Haar, Mähne (the mane)—i. e., "right"), are spoken for the child by the members of his family. Some names of animals, like kukuk (cuckoo), also kikeriki (cock) and kuak (duck, frog), are probably formed often without having been heard from others, only more indistinctly, by German, English (American), and French children. Ticktack (tick-tick) has also been repeated by a boy of two years for a watch. On the other hand, weo-weo-weo (German, ŭio) for the noise of winding a watch (observed by Holden in a boy of two years) is original. Hüt, as an unsuccessful imitation of the locomotive-whistle by my boy of two and a half years, seems also noteworthy as an onomatope independently invented, because it was used daily for months in the same way merely to designate the whistle. The voice of the hen, of the redstart, the creaking of a wheel, were imitated by my child of his own accord long before he could speak a word. But this did not go so far as the framing of syllables. It is not easy in this to trace so clearly the framing of a concept as attaching itself directly to onomatopoetic forms as it is in a case communicated by Romanes. A child that was beginning to talk, saw and heard a duck on the water, and said quack. Thereafter the child called, on the one hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all liquids, quack. Finally, it called all coins also quack, after having seen an eagle on a French sou. Thus the child came, by gradual generalization, to the point of designating a fly, wine, and a piece of money by the same onomatopoetic word, although only the first perception contained the characteristic that gave the name.
Another case is reported by Eduard Schulte: A boy of a year and three quarters applied the joyous outcry ei (which may be an imitated interjection), modifying it first into eiz, into aze, and then into ass, to his wooden goat on wheels, and covered with rough hide; eiz, then, became exclusively a cry of joy; ass, the name for everything that moved along—e. g., for animals and his own sister and the wagon; also for everything that moved at all; finally, for everything that had a rough surface. Now, as this child already called all coverings of the head and covers of cans huta, when he saw, for the first time, a fur cap, he at once christened it ass-huta. Here took place a decided subordination of one concept to another, and therewith a new formation of a word. How broad the comprehensiveness of the concept designated huta was, is perceived especially in this, that it was used to express the wish to have objects at which the child pointed. He liked to put all sorts of things that pleased him upon his head, calling them huta. Out of the huta, for "I should like to have that as a hat" grew, then, after frequent repetition, "I should like that." There was in this case an extension of the narrower concept, after it had itself experienced previously a differentiation, and so a limitation, by means of the suffix ass. These examples show how independent of words the formation of concepts is. With the smallest stock of words the concepts are yet manifold, and are designated by the same word when there is a lack of words for the composition of new words, and so for fresh word-formation.
The formation of words out of interjections without imitation has not been observed. Here belongs the rollu, rollolo, uttered by my boy, of his own accord, on seeing rolling balls or wheels; and (in the twentieth month) rodi, otto, rojo, where the rotation perceived by the child occasions at once the one or the other exclamation containing l or r. In the case of Steinthal, it was lu-lulu; in the case of a boy a year and a half old, observed by Kussmaul, it was golloh. In these cases the first interjection is always occasioned by a noise, not simply by the sight of things rolling without noise. The interjection must accordingly be styled imitative. A combination of the original—i. e., inborn—interjectional sounds into syllables and groups of syllables, without the assistance of members of the family, and without imitation, for the purpose of communicating an idea, is not proved to exist.
On the whole, the way in which the child learns to speak not merely resembles the way in which he learns at a later period to write, but is essentially completely in accord with it. Here, too, he makes no new inventions. First are drawn strokes and blurs without meaning; then certain strokes are imitated; then signs of sounds. These can not be at once combined into syllables, and even after the combination has been achieved and the written word can be made from the syllables it is not yet understood. Yet the child could see, even before the first instruction in writing or the first attempt at scribbling, every individual letter in the dimensions in which he writes it later. So, too, the speechless child hears every sound before he understands syllables and words, and he understands them before he can speak them. The child commonly learns reading before writing, and so understands the sign he is to write before he can write it. Yet the sign written by himself is often just as unintelligible to him as the word he himself speaks. The analogy is perfect.
If the first germs of words, after ideas have begun to become clear by means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category belongs the comparative hocher for höher in the sentence hocher bauen (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request when playing with building-stones). The understanding of the comparative is plainly manifest in this. When, therefore, the same child in his fifth year, to the improper question, "Whom do you like better, papa or mamma?" answers, "Papa and mamma," we should not infer a lack of that understanding, as many do (e. g., Heyfelder); but the decision is impossible to the child. Just so in the case of the question, "Would you rather have the apple or the pear?"
Other inventions of my child were the verb messen for "mit dem Messer schneiden" (to cut with the knife); schiffern, i. e., "das Schiff bewegen" (move the ship), for "rudern," (row). And the preference of the weak inflection on the part of all children is a proof that after the appropriation of a small number of words through imitation, independent—always logical—changes of formation are undertaken. Gegebt, gegeht, getrinkt (gived, goed, drinked), have never been heard by the child; but "gewebt, geweht, gewinkt" (as in English, waved, wafted, beckoned), have been known to him as models (or other formations corresponding to these). Yet this is by no means to say that every mutilation or transformation the child proposes is a copy after an erroneously selected model; rather the child's imagination has a wide field here and acts in manifold fashion, especially by combinations. "My teeth-roof pains me," said a boy who did not yet know the word "palate." Another in his fourth year called the road (Weg) the "go" (Gehe). A child of three years used the expression, "Just grow me" (wachs mich einmal) for "Just see how I have grown" (Sieh einmal wie ich gewachsen bin) (Lindner). Such creations of the childish faculty of combination, arising partly through blending, partly through transference, are collected in a neat pamphlet, "Zur Philosophie der Kindersprache," by Agathon Keber, 1868. The most of them, however, are from a later time of life than that here treated of. So it is with the two "heretical" utterances communicated by Rösch. A child said unterblatte (under-leaf) for "Oblate," because he saw the wafer (Oblate) slipped under the leaf of paper (Blatt); and he called the "American chair," "Herr-Decaner-chair," because somebody who was called "Herr Decan" used to sit in it. Here may be seen the endeavor to put into the acoustic impression not understood a meaning. These expressions are not inventions, but they are evidence of intellect. They can not, of course, appear in younger children without knowledge of words, because they are transformations of words.
On the other hand it is of the greatest importance for the understanding of the first stage of the use of words in their real significance, after the acquirement of them has once begun, to observe how many different ideas the child announces by one and the same verbal expression. Here are some examples: Tuhl (for Stuhl, chair) signifies—1. "My chair is gone"; 2. "The chair is broken"; 3. "I want to be lifted into the chair"; 4. "Here is a chair." The child (Steinthal's) says (in the twenty-second month), when he sees or hears a barking dog, bellt (barks), and thinks he has by that word designated the whole complex phenomenon, the sight-perception of the dog and of a particular dog, and the sound-perception; but he says bellt also when he merely hears the dog. No doubt the memory-image of the dog he has seen is then revived for him.
Through this manifold significance of a word, which is a substitute for a whole sentence, is exhibited a much higher activity of the intellect than appears in the mutilation and new formation of words having but one meaning to designate a sense-impression, for, although in the latter is manifested the union of impressions into perceptions and also of qualities into concepts, wherein an unconscious judgment is involved, yet a clear judgment is not necessarily connected with them. The union of concepts into conscious clear judgments is recognized rather in the formation of a sentence, no matter whether this is expressed by one word or by several words.