ARTICULATION, 143 



tion, we may presume), 'church,* 'prayer-book,' 'cross/ *prlest,* 

 'to say their prayers.' Ban was 'soldier;' but, we are told, 

 from seeing the bishop in his mitre and vestments, thinking 

 he was a soldier, they applied the word ban to him. Gar odo 

 properly signified ' send for the horse ; ' but as the children 

 frequently saw their father, when a carriage was wanted, write 

 an order and send it to the stable, they came to use the same 

 expression (ygar odd) for pencil and paper. 



"There is no appearance of inflection, properly speaking, 

 in the language ; and this is only what might be expected. 

 Very young children rarely use inflected forms in any 

 language. The English child of three or four years says, 

 'Mary cup,' for 'Mary's cup;' and 'Dog bite Harry' will 

 represent every tense and mood. It is by no means improb- 

 able that, if the children had continued to use their own 

 language for a few years longer, inflections would have been 

 developed in it, as we see that peculiar forms of construction 

 and novel compounds — which are the germs of inflection — had 

 already made their appearance. 



"These two recorded instances of child-languages have 

 led to further inquiries, which, though pursued only for a 

 brief period, and in a limited field, have shown that cases of 

 this sort are by no means uncommon." 



The author then proceeds to furnish other corroborative 

 instances ; but the above quotations are, I think, sufficient for 

 my purposes.* For they show (i) that the spontaneous and 



* I may, however, add the following corroborative observations, as they have 

 not been previously published. I owe them to the kindness of my friend Mr. A. 

 E. Street, who kept a diary of his children's psychogenesis. When about two years 

 of age one of these children possessed the following vocabulary : — 

 Af-ta (in imitation of the sound which the nurse used to make when pretending to 



drink) = di-inking or a drmk^ drinking-vessely and hence a glass of any kind. 

 Vy = a/j. 



Vy-'ta = window^ i.e. the 'ta or af-ta {glass) on which a fly walks. 

 Blow = candle. 



Blow-hattie = a lamp, i.e. candle v/ith a hat or shade. 

 'Nell = 2l flower, i.e. smell. 



These words are clearly all of imitative origin. The following, however, seem 

 to have been purely arbitrary :— 



