444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nities. Thus the child's metaphorical use of words, his setting" 

 forth of an abstract by some analogous concrete image, has its 

 counterpart, as we all know, in the early stages of human lan- 

 guage. Tribes which have no abstract signs employ a metaphor 

 exactly as the child does. Our own language preserves the traces 

 of this early figurative use of words ; as in the " imbecile " (weak), 

 which originally meant leaning on a staff, and so forth.* Simi- 

 larly we may trace in the development of languages the counter- 

 part of these processes by which children spontaneously broaden 

 out the denotation of their names. The word " sun " has only 

 quite recently undergone this kind of extension by being applied 

 to other centers of systems besides our familiar sun. The multi- 

 plicity of meanings of certain words, as " post," " stock," and so 

 forth, point to the double process of assimilative and associative 

 extension which we saw illustrated in the use of the child's word 

 " mambro." 



The changes here touched upon have to do with what philolo- 

 gists call generalization. As supplementary to these there is in 

 the case of the growth of a community language a process of 

 specialization, as when " physician," from meaning a student of 

 Nature, has come to mean one who has acquired and can prac- 

 tically apply one branch of Nature-knowledge. In the case of the 

 child we have an analogue of this in the gradual limitation of 

 such a sound as "papa "to one individual. The mental process 

 underlying specialization of words viz., the gradual differentia- 

 tion or marking off of narrower classes shows itself in a very 

 interesting feature of child and savage language, viz., the inven- 

 tion of new compound words. 



These new compounds are open metaphors. Thus in the case 

 already mentioned the calling of an eyelid an eye-curtain is a 

 metaphorical way of speaking of the lid by likening it to a cur- 

 tain. Another example is the comi)Ound " foot-wing " invented 

 by the child C to describe the limb of a seal. A slightly dif- 

 ferent kind of metaphoric formation is the pretty name tell-wind,. 

 which a boy of four years and eight months hit upon as a name 

 for a weather vane. 



In these and similar cases there is at once an analogical trans- 

 ference of meaning (e. g., from curtain to lid) or process of gener- 

 alization, and a limitation of meaning by the appended or quali- 

 fying word ("eye") that is to say, a process of specialization. 



In certain cases the analogical extension gives place to ordi- 

 nary classing. One child, for example, knowing the word steam- 

 ship, and wanting the name sailing ship, invented the form " wind 

 ship." 



* See Trench's account of poetry in words. On the Study of Words, lecture vi. 



