STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 441 



want (or, possibly, don't want) the dog." These words are " sen- 

 tence-words "'that is, they are meant to convey a whole process 

 of thoiTght. Only the thought is as yet only half formed or ger- 

 minal in the degree of its differentiation. Thus it is fairly cer- 

 tain that when the child wants you to sit down and says " dow," 

 it does not clearly realize the relation which you and I understand 

 under that word, but merely has a mental picture of you in the 

 position of sitter. 



In these first attempts to use our speech the child's mind is in- 

 nocent of grammatical distinctions. These arise out of the par- 

 ticular uses of words in sentence structure, and of this structure 

 the child has as yet no inkling. If, then, following a common 

 practice, I speak of a child of twelve or fifteen months as naming 

 an object, the reader must not suppose that I am ascribing to the 

 baby mind a clear grasp of the function of what grammarians 

 call nouns (substantives). All that is implied in this way of 

 speaking is that the infant's first words are used mainly as recog- 

 nition signs. There is from the first, I conceive, even in the ges- 

 ture of pointing and saying " da ! " a germ of this naming pro- 

 cess. 



The progress of this first rude naming or articulate recogni- 

 tion is very interesting. The names first learned are either those 

 of individuals, what we call proper names, as mamma, nurse, or 

 those which, like '' bath," " wow-wow," are at first applied to one 

 particular object. It is often supposed that a child uses these as 

 true singular names, recognizing individual objects as such ; but 

 this is pretty certainly an error. He has no clear idea of an indi- 

 vidual thing as yet ; and he will, as occasion arises, quite spon- 

 taneously extend his names to other individuals, as we see in his 

 lumping together other men with his sire under the name " papa." 



This extension of names or generalizing process proceeds pri- 

 marily and mainly by the discovery of the likenesses among 

 things, though, as we shall see presently, their connections of 

 time and place afiiord a second and subordinate means of expan- 

 sion. The transference of a name from object to object through 

 the discovery of a likeness or analogy has been touched on in 

 another chapter. It moves along thoroughly childish lines, and 

 constitutes one of the most striking and interesting of the mani- 

 festations of precocious originality. Yet, if unconventional in 

 its mode of operation, it is essentially thought activity, a con- 

 necting of like with like, and a rudimentary grouping of things 

 in classes. 



This tendency to comprehend like things or situations under 

 a single articulate sign is seen already in the use of the early in- 

 dicative sign "atta " (all gone). It was used by Preyer's child to 

 mark not only the departure of a thing, but the putting out of a 



VOL. XLVI. 32 



