90 H. L. BROOM ALL : 



creak, and he recognizes in the vocal sounds o, d and e^ 

 direct imitation of the character of the external sounds these 

 words respectively represent. He perceives, perhaps vaguely, 

 that ^roan and o^runt somehow actually imitate the noises 

 they name. He may go so far as to recognize the value of 

 k?- and gr as onomatopoetic elements. This direct imitation 

 does not confine itself in the child to the words he hears. 

 Objects of which some sound is the striking characteristic, 

 such as a dog or bell, are named at first by direct imitation, 

 as bozv-tvow or diyig-dong . These names, however, generally 

 give way later on to the words used for these things by the 

 speakers of the child's environment. 



We thus arrive at the starting point of the present study. 

 The imitation which is the basis of language learning, as 

 thus far considered, may be either ( i) of the language around 

 us, or (2) of other sounds around us; the former process 

 being essential and predominant, the latter exceptional and 

 restrained. These are well known principles acknowledged 

 by linguistic students. 



It is the purpose of this article to suggest that the imita- 

 tion extends not only to the sounds of external objects, but 

 also to their motion and relative mass. 



This involves the proposition that, just as an external 

 sound may be imitated by a vocal sound, so there may be 

 movements and positions of the vocal organs, in making 

 certain sounds, or in changing from one sound to another, 

 which seem to the speaker to be correlated with the move- 

 ments and relative mass of things he sees in the outside world. 

 Motion and sound so frequently occur together in nature that 

 a vocal soiind may often be felt as referring to both and 

 sometimes by one person as imitating the motion and by 

 another the sound. While croak and creak may be considered 



* As this present article is non-tcclinical, the diacritical si^iis of pro- 

 nunciation adopted bj' the standard lexicographers are here used because 

 they are generally known and because the\' are sufficiently accurate for 

 general phonetic cousi(ler;ition. 



