STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 445 



It might be supposed that the qualifying or determining word 

 might come ,iust as naturally after the generic name as before it, 

 as in the French moulin a vent, cygne noir. I have heard of one 

 hild who used the form " mill- wind " in preference to " windmill." 

 It would be worth while to note any similar instances. 



In these inventions, again, we may detect a close resemblance 

 between children's language and that of savages. In presence of 

 a new object a savage behaves very much as a child ; he shapes a 

 new name out of familiar ones, a name that commonly has much 

 of the metaphorical character. Thus the Aztecs called a boat a 

 " water house " ; and the Vancouver islanders, when they saw a 

 screw steamer, called it the " kick-kicke." * 



A somewhat different class of word inventions is that in which 

 a child frames a new word on the analogy of known words. The 

 more common case is the invention of new substantives from 

 verbs after the pattern of other substantives. The results are 

 often quaint enough. Sometimes it is the agent who is named by 



the new word, as when the boy C talked of the " Rainer," or 



the fairy who makes rain. Sometimes it is the product of the 



action, as when the same child C and the deaf-mute Laura 



Bridgman both invented the form " thinks " for " thoughts." 

 Similarly, a boy of three called the holes which he dug in his 

 garden his " digs." The reverse process, the formation of a verb 

 from a substantive, also occurs. Thus one child invented the 

 form " dag " for striking with a dagger ; and Preyer's boy, when 

 two years and two months old, formed the verb " messen," to ex- 

 press " cut," from the substantive Messer (a knife). This readiness 

 to form verbs from substantives, and vice versa, which is abun- 

 dantly illustrated in the development of community language, is 

 without doubt connected with the primitive and natural mode of 

 thinking. The object is of greatest interest to a child as to primi- 

 tive man as an agent, or as the last stage or result of an action. 



In certain of these original formations we may detect a fine 

 feeling for verbal analogy. Thus, a French boy, after killing 

 the limaces (snails) which were eating the plants in the garden, 

 dignified his office by styling himself a "limacier," where the 

 inventive faculty was no doubt led by the analogy of voiturier 

 formed from voiture. \ 



In certain cases these original constructions are of a more 

 clumsy order, and due to a partial forgetfulness of a word and an 

 effort to complete it. The same little boy who talked of his 



* Tylor, Anthropology, chapter v. In the ease of the Chinese and of every savage lan- 

 guage, the specific or " attributive " word precedes and does not follow the generic or sub- 

 stantive word. 



f Compayre, op. cif., page 249, where other examples are given. 



