AN INFANT'S PROGRESS IN LANGUAGE. 593 



out to us, and with triumphant affirmation, " Clean ! " (JcWn). Here 

 we have not merely vocal signs, but intercourse by speech one may 

 say an elementary form of repartee and argument. She can now say 

 "yes" (es, or is, sometimes as) and "no" in answer to questions with 

 fair intelligence, though she sometimes answers at random, and some- 

 times gives the wrong answer on purpose for a joke. One of her new 

 words isfa-ni (funny), which she uses in a wider sense than adults, for 

 anything that pleases and surprises her. The imitative name for the 

 cat is dropped, and she now says (for "pussy") pil-si (U as in South- 

 German, coming very near to i). " Funny " is also used to disguise fear, 

 e. g., on being introduced to a strange dog. When left to play alone 

 she talks to herself constantly. The staple of one of these monologues 

 (March 10th) was d-did (formed on "O dear"). I half suspect a dra- 

 matic intention in her proceedings. 



The peculiar short sound of English a (represented by ce in Mr. 

 Ellis's general notation) is now forming. She can say " bag " nearly 

 like an adult. But, as a rule, she still substitutes (Indian) a or d, say- 

 ing, e. g., " cub," or " kahb," for " cab." 



Twenty-one months. Progress is now less marked and rapid. New 

 words continue to be acquired, but the power of putting them together 

 does not seem to increase much. The child is, however, now more or 

 less able to answer direct as distinguished from leading questions. 

 Thus, when she had been paying a visit to some relations and cried to 

 go home, she gave afterward (March 17th) a pretty connected account 



of it in monosyllabic answers. Q. What did you do to-day at ? 



A. Klai ("cry"). Q. And what did you cry for? A. Ham ("home," 

 i. e., I cried to go home). Also, when told not to handle a forbidden 

 object, such as a knife, she will say, in a tone of intelligent acquiescence : 

 No da da (i. e., I may not have that, but da dd may). One trisylla- 

 ble is in common use : Tenisi= Tennyson, an illustrated edition, which 

 divides her attention with Vats (Watts). 



As to sounds, r is generally replaced by I or 11, or (approximately) 

 hi: Man or Wcm="run." The prosthetic initial sound for words be- 

 ginning with vowels is now zh, or an aspirated y. 



She begins, too, to put now and then a substantive and adjective 

 together : " clever baby," " happy man " (in picture) ; the meaning of 

 which she now seems to understand well enough. 



Twenty-one and a half months. There is now a distinct advance in 

 constructive power. Substantives and adjectives are freely put to- 

 gether (e. g., "dirty boots"), and I have noted one instance of the use 

 of a real predicate, so as to form a complete proposition. The child 

 had been told, half in joke, that cabs were dirty as compared with her 

 perambulator. For some days she had been accustomed to say " dirty " 

 on the mention of cab, " clean " on the mention of perambulator. Now 

 vol. xiii. 38 



