STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 781 



STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 



VII. LATER PROGRESS IN LANGUAGE. 



By JAMES SULLY, M. A., LL. D., 



GROTE PROFESSOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 



LONDON. 



IN a previous paper I traced some of the earlier steps in the 

 child's acquisition of language. In the present study we may 

 follow him in his later and more ambitious linguistic efforts. 



The transition to this higher plane is marked by the use of the 

 complete form of thought or sentence. 



At first, as already pointed out, there is no sentence structure. 

 The child begins to talk by using single words. His speech is 

 monepic. 



These words consist of substantives, such as "mamma," 

 " nurse," " milk," and so forth ; a few adjectives as " hot," " nice," 

 " good " ; a still smaller number of adverbial signs, as " ta-ta," 

 " away " or " over," " down," " up " ; and one or two verb forms, 

 apparently imperatives, as " go." The exact order in which these 

 appear, and the proportion between the different classes of con- 

 stituents at a particular age, say two and a half or three, appear 

 to vary greatly. Words descriptive of actions, thoiigh very few 

 at first, appear to grow numerous in a later stage.* 



In speaking of these words as substantives, adjectives, and so 

 forth, I am merely adopting a convenient mode of description. 

 We must not suppose that the words as used in this simple dis- 

 jointed talk have their full grammatical value. It is not gen- 

 erally recognized that the single-worded utterance of the child is 

 an abbreviated sentence or " sentence word " analogous to the 

 sentence words found in the lowest known stage of human lan- 

 guage. As with the race so with the child, the sentence precedes 

 the word.f Moreover, each of the child's so-called words in his 

 single-worded talk stands for a considerable variety of sentence 

 forms. Thus the words in the child's vocabulary which we call 

 substantives do duty for verbs and so forth. As Preyer remarks, 

 "chair" {Stulil) means "There is no chair"; "I want to be put 

 in the chair " ; " The chair is broken," and so-forth. In like 

 manner " dow " (down) may mean " The spoon has fallen down." J 

 The particular shade of meaning intended is indicated by intona- 

 tion and gesture. 



* For lists of vocabularies and analysis of these composit'ons see Preyer, op. cil., p. 361. 

 Tracy, Psychology of Childhood, p. 1& ff. 

 f Of. Romanes, op. cU., p. 296 ff. 

 :}: See Preyer, op. cif., p. 361 ; Romanes, op. cif., p. 296 fp. 



