CHILDREN'S VOCABULARIES. 51 



one can see how the compound words came into use later on together 

 with the finer specialization, shown also in the more exact adverbs, prep- 

 ositions, conjunctions, etc. 



Thus, too, many equally easy words come to be used much later 

 when they become useful or interesting, as mat, muff, people, joke, note, 

 lace, veil, care, screw, bone, gas, glue, guess, give, fill, feed, tell, buy, 

 sbine, scrub, sure, like and soft. On the other hand, long hard words 

 are used when the child's interests need them, used, however, in the 

 modified shape of the nearest imitative sound the child can make or of 

 some original substitute word. Thus they associated some sound which 

 served as a word for nigger-book, handkerchief, petticoat, toboggan, 

 umbrella, Brille, hammock, Brightwood, university, perfumery, Bauch- 

 knopf, apple-sauce, rocking-chair, dein ist mein Herz, chimney-sweep, 

 Pantoffeln, peppermint-candy, waste-paper basket, Miss Haversham, 

 David Copperfield, Thomas Orchestra, Beethoven, Brahms, button- 

 hole scissors, magnifying glass, Kohlpechrabenschwarzermohr (in 

 which 2 (b.) only left out the two syllables en and er) ; telephone, 

 vaccinate, be reposed, collapse, Headerei (to be carried on one's 

 shoulders, originated themselves from Washerei), kitzeln, remember, 

 disturb; comfortable, precious, old-fashioned; day after to-morrow, 

 guten Morgen, guten Abend, auf Wiedersehen. 



We believe then that the acquisition of words by a child is mainly 

 accounted for by the psychological laws of pleasure-pain, viz. : ( 1 ) the 

 biological law that whatever is favorable or more immediately beneficial 

 to our organism is pleasurable and that the harmful is painful; (2) 

 between these extreme limits things are further differentiated as 

 pleasurable or painful by being associated with things already differen- 

 tiated by the biological law, and this principle of association comes 

 indirectly under (1) ; (3) by the habit or custom principle whereby we 

 come to have pleasure in anything long-continued about us — supposing 

 it is not so immediately harmful as to kill us in the process of 

 adaptation. 



Words then are simply the tools whereby the child gets more 

 pleasures and avoids more pains. And the number of these words is 

 normally limited only by the pleasure-pains which are of sufficient 

 intensity to make the motor connections for speaking the words. We 

 have many observations showing how this association of the sound with 

 the thing was made without any apparent attention to the sound; so 

 that when the child's pleasure-pain interest in the thing was enough 

 for it to want to use the word, out it popped without any previous trial 

 or practice. If the child merely lives in an environment where the 

 words are heard or — later on — seen in books, the words get themselves 

 ready for use when needed. 



