786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



general types or norms of the language, so far as this has become 

 familiar. 



The English child is not much troubled by inflections of sub- 

 stantives. The pronouns, however, as every mother knows, are 

 apt to cause much heartburning to the little linguist. The mas- 

 tery of "I" and "you," "me," "mine," etc., forms an epoch in 

 the development of linguistic faculty and of the power of thought 

 which is so closely correlated with these. Hence it will repay a 

 brief inspection. 



As is well known, children begin by designating themselves 

 and those whom they address by names, as when they say, " Baby 

 good," " Mamma come." This is described as speaking " in the 

 third person," yet this is not quite accurate, seeing that there is 

 as yet no distinction of person in the child language. 



Later, when the little brain grows more cunning and the 

 tongue nimbler, the child introduces differences of person, and 

 uses the pronominal forms " I " or " me," " you," etc. So far as I 

 can ascertain, most children begin to say " me " before they say 

 " you." Yet I have met with one or two apparent exceptions to 



this rule. Thus the boy C certainly seemed to get hold of the 



form of the second person before that of the first, and the priority 

 of " you " is attested in another case sent to me. It is desirable 

 to get more observations on this point. 



To determine the exact date at which an intelligent use of the 

 first person appears is much less easy than it looks. A child is 

 apt at first to use the forms " me " and " you " mechanically that 

 is, imitating exactly what another says, and so speaking of another 

 person as " I " and of himself as " you." Here it is evident there 

 is no clear proof of the pronominal form. Allowing for these 

 difficulties, it may be said with some degree of confidence that the 

 great transition from " baby " to " I " is wont to take place in 

 favorable cases early in the third year. Thus among the dates 

 assigned by different observers I find twenty-four months and 

 twenty-five months (cases given by Preyer), between twenty-five 



and twenty-six (Pollock), twenty-seven months (the boy C ). 



A lady friend tells me that her boy began to use "I" at 

 twenty-four months. In the case of a certain number of preco- 

 cious children this point is attained at an earlier date. Thus 

 Preyer quotes a case of a child speaking in the first person at 

 twenty months. Schultze gives a case at nineteen months. A 

 friend of mine, a professor of English literature, whose boy 

 showed great precocity at sentence-building, reports that he used 

 the forms " me " and " I " within the sixteenth month. Preyer's 

 boy, on the other hand, who was evidently somewhat slow in lin- 

 gual development, first used the forms of the first person " to me ' 

 (m^>) at the age of twenty-nine months. 



