STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. ' 437 



Along with, this tendency to reduplication we see a disposition 

 to use particular syllabic sounds, as the final "ie." Thus sugar 

 becomes "sugie"; picture, " pickie " ; and. so forth. One child 

 was so much in love with this syllable as to prefer it to the com- 

 mon repetition of sound in onomatopoetic imitation, naming the 

 hen not " tuck-tuck,'^ as one might expect, but " tuckie." 



I have here given only a very rough account of children's first 

 tentatives in the use of their mother tongue. As yet the facts do 

 not admit of an exact general description. As already suggested, 

 the seizing of the precise shade of an infantile vowel or conso- 

 nant requires the finely trained, ear, and probably a good deal of 

 this part of child observation will have to be reconsidered.* 



The facts being as yet but imperfectly observed and classified, 

 it would be premature to offer anything in the way of a complete 

 and final explanation. A difficulty here arises from the circum- 

 stance already noted that, according to Preyer, the child in his 

 spontaneous babbling produces most if not all of our common 

 language sounds and others too. This may turn out to be an ex- 

 aggeration ; yet at any rate it is a fact that certain sounds, as I 

 and r, which occur in the first impulsive babbling, appear to give 

 difficulty later on. How comes this to pass ? In order to open 

 up the way to an answer we must look for a moment a little more 

 closely at the process of imitative speech. The later linguistic 

 utterance of a sound differs from and is a much more complex 

 affair than the earlier and impulsive utterance. It is the result 

 of a volition which involves a mental association between the 

 ear's impression of a particular sound, or the idea answering to 

 this, with the idea of the required vocal or articulatory action. 

 Thus a child could not say "poo," in imitation of his nurse's 

 poo," till the hearing of this sound had got connected, by means 

 of nervous attachments in the brain, with an idea or representa- 

 tion of what its larynx and lips have to do in uttering this sound 

 poo." Nor could he utter it alone in order to name an object 

 until the idea of the sound had entered into this connection. 



Now a child might go on hearing the sounds of others for- 

 ever and never be able to speak, unless he happened by some 

 fortunate circumstance to produce the requisite articulate move- 

 ments and so find out how the several varieties of sound are ob- 

 tained. And this is precisely what the early aimless and largely 

 emotional babbling effects. It makes the child acquainted with 

 his own articulate powers, their modifications, and the particular 

 sound-effects which respectively follow these. 



* One of the most painstaking attempts to describe infantile sounds with scientific 

 exactness is that of Sir F. Pollock in his notes On an Infant's Progress in Language. 

 Mind, vol. iii, p. 392 seq. 



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