STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 785 



when " screamed " becomes " scram " ; " split " (preterit), " splat " 

 or " splut," and so forth. In other cases the child will convert a 

 strong into a weak form, as when Laura Bridgman, like many 

 another child, would say " I eated,^' " I seed," and so forth.* These 

 differences in the direction of the solecism would probably turn 

 on differences in the word-forms serving as model or precedent 

 which happen to be learned first and to make the strongest im- 

 pression on the memory. 



One thing seems clear here : the child's instinct is to simplify 

 our forms, to get rid of irregularities. This is strikingly illus- 

 trated in the use of the heterogeneous assemblage of forms known 

 as the verb " to be." It is really hard on a child to expect him to 

 answer the question, "Are you good now ?" by saying, "Yes, I 

 am." He says, of course, " Yes, I are." Perhaps the poor verb 

 "to be" has suffered every kind of violence at the hands of chil- 

 dren, f Prof. Max Mliller somewhere says that children are the 

 purifiers of language. Would it not be well if they could become 

 its simplifiers also, and give us in place of this heap of dissimilar 

 sounds one good decent verb-form ? 



Other quaint transformations occur when the child begins to 

 combine words, as when he says, "Am't I?" for "Am I not," 

 after the pattern of " Aren't we ? " An even finer linguistic 

 stroke than this is "Bettern't you ?" for "Had you not better ?" 

 where the child was evidently trying to get in the form " Hadn't 

 you," along with the awkward " better," which seemed to belong 

 to the " had," and solved the problem by treating " better " as the 

 verb, and dropping " had " altogether. 



A study of these solecisms, which are nearly always amusing, 

 and sometimes daintily pretty, is useful to mothers and young 

 teachers by way of showing how much hard work, how much of 

 real conjectural inference, enters into children's essays in talking. 

 We ought not to wonder that they now and again slip ; rather 

 ought we to wonder that with all the intricacies and pitfalls of 

 our language this applies, of course, with especial force to the 

 motley, irregular English tongue they slip so rarely. As a 

 matter of fact, the later and more " correct " talk which is cor- 

 rect just because there is a large memory-stock of particular 

 word-forms, and consequently a much greater scope for pure un- 

 inventive imitation is much less admirable than the early in- 

 ventive imitation ; for this last not only has the quality of origi- 

 nality, but shows the germ of a truly grammatical feeling for the 



* The same double tendency from weak to strong forms, and vice versa, see in the list 

 of transformed past participles given by Preyer, op. cit., p. 360. 



\ See Preyer's account of a German cliild's liberties with the same verb where we find 

 gebisst, binnsf, and other odd forms, op. cii., p. 438. 



TOL. XLVI. 59 



