March 3, 1893.] 



SCIENCE. 



119 



They vary in tone according to the nature of the exciting cause, 

 and in intensity according to its degree. The range of expression 

 is exceedingly limited, for several months being chiefly restricted 

 within the bounds of physical suffering. Here, however, some 

 mothers and some medical men find valuable assistance in the 

 diagnosis of physiological disturbances. 



But the young infant's cries do not always express physical 

 feeling merely. There soon appears a quality, which, after very 

 little development, comes to be distinguished as mental. The 

 child H., on the eighth day after birth, was much startled by the 

 sound of a bottle falling to the floor. She made no outcry on 

 this occasion, but on the twentieth day a similar noise drew from 

 her well-marked tones of fear. At the same time a general tremor 

 was exhibited by her, such as accompanies terror in older per- 

 sons. It, is not to be wondered that there should be expressive 

 emotional quality in the cries of such young children when we 

 observe the well-marked variations in facial expression even at 

 this early period. Physical pain shows itself in the countenance 

 from the very flrst. On the fifth day H. undoubtedly manifested 

 disgust in this way at the taste of a nauseous medicine, but her 

 countenance immediately resumed the normal expression when 

 a pleasant medicine was substituted. On the seventeenth day 

 she showed great distress at the sharp and screaming cries of an- 

 other child. On the thirty second day she smiled at her mother 

 in response to fondling and caresses. On the thirty-eighth day 

 her countenance plainly expressed wonder when she was taken 

 into a strange room. 



The young infant's cries of discomfort soon become differ- 

 entiated, and among the specific utterances that emerge the cry 

 or call of desire appears early. It is difiicult to define the subtle 

 beginnings of this form of utterance; it seemed plain to me in 

 one case in the second month ; there is no doubt that it appeared 

 in the tones of another child in the sixth month. 



On the thirtieth day the child M. gave utterance to a sound 

 indicative of comfort and satisfaction. By the forty-eighth day 

 this sound assumed distinct form as a low, soft oo. During the 

 nights of the forty-fifth and the forty-ninth days M. laughed 

 heartily in her sleep with a sound that, except for its softness, 

 certainly resembled very much the adult " ha, ha, ha." 



This last utterance, perhaps, shows merely one form of vocal 

 capacity at the time, but it seems reasonable to assume that the 

 other utterances described, or most of them at least, possess 

 psychical significance in some degree. It is not sufficient to speak 

 of such sounds as mere non-significant products of muscular move- 

 ments, reflex, instinctive, or spontaneous. They are really the 

 crude raw material of the vocal element in conventional speech. 

 They soon grow into the sounds of language, which is the joint 

 product of mental and bodily faculties and activities. 



Just at this stage the child is in a fit condition to begin any 

 language. These fii-st utterances belong to the common mother- 

 tongue of the race. What particular form of speech the child 

 ultimately learns depends altogether on his environment. He 

 begins wildly and indiscriminately with various sounds, but in 

 course of time some, lacking the stimulus of example and en- 

 coui-agement from those about the child, fall into disuse, while 

 other sounds, under that stimulus, are drawn out and cultivated. 

 The speech of the adult is the result of a long evolution under the 

 influence of environment and unconscious selection. 



The observer of child language must note development along 

 two lines, in the mind and in the vocal organs. We will follow 

 the latter chiefly. The inarticulate cries and calls of chiMren 

 soon come to be interspersed with articulate sounds. The easier 

 vowels come early. The child M. uttered freely and clearly ah 

 and 00 early in the third month. These sounds appeared spon- 

 taneously, but could afterwards be evoked in imitation. 



Of the consonantal sounds, the first to appear in the cases of 

 O. and M. were b, f, p, d, t, m, n, ng, h, k, and g guttural as an 

 Initial. O. could make these sounds in the tenth month, but for 

 several months afterwards he could pronounce them only singly 

 or in easy combinations. Slowly, and wath greater or less diffi- 

 culty, the others were acquired. At two years O. could pronounce 

 the vowel and dipthong sounds except oi and ew, and all the con- 

 sonants except th, v, and the trilled 1 and r. He still had consid- 



erable difficulty with the guttural g as a final, for which he sub- 

 stituted d until his fourth year. For k final he invariably used 

 fc for about the same period ; v was sounded b for a while, th was 

 entirely omitted as a thick sound, as a thin sound f or s was sub 

 stituted until the fourth year. Various consonantal combina- 

 tions were especially slow in being perfected, as ks and kw. and 

 all combinations with s as initial. 1 and r gave trouble until the 

 fifth year. At first they were omitted entirely in any situation, 

 then y and w began to appear respectively as initial substitutes, 

 and the preceding vowels began to acquire breadth and prolonga- 

 tion when 1 and r were medials or finals. The child M., however, 

 acquired r final early in the second year. 



The mispronunciations of children may seem arbitrary and 

 altogether irregular to the casual observer, but in reality nearly 

 all of them can be readily classified and arranged under law, the 

 same law that appears in the broken speech of foreigners attempt- 

 ing English, and indeed in the history of the changes that have 

 come over the sounds of English words themselves. A child is a 

 foreigner learning the language, and he pronounces the easier 

 sounds rather than the difficult. The omissions and substitutions 

 of children represent the difficulties in sounding the vocal ele- 

 ments and combinations of our speech — difficulties that adults 

 struggled with and overcame at so early an age that they do not 

 recognize them as difficulties. 



In the speech of the child O. during his first four years the fol- 

 loiving classes of consonantal substitutions regularly appeared. 



First classifying the sounds according to the organ of articu- 

 lation : — 



Sound Sound 



attempted, made. Example. Comparison. 



Labials. f p Eppie = Effle (L) pater, father 



wh f file = wbile cough 



V f ofer = over five, fifty 



V b ballse = valise have (O.E ), habbaQ 

 p m moon = spoon Polly, Molly 



m p Pata = Martha Patty, Mattie 



Dentals. d n ness = dress 



t n nats = tacks 



th t cot = cloth 



t d bodde = bottle (L) duo, two 



Second, classifying the sounds according to their duration in 

 utterance; — 



Spirants {sharp). t h 



Mutes (sharp), 

 {flat). 



gissle = thistle loves, loveth 



hind = find laugh 



tumb = rhumb Fedor, Theodore 



fots = lox 



pid = pig 



Jive = give joy, (L) gaudere 



]anana = banana 



jit = drink 



limy — tiuy lime, linden 



(nasal). n m 



Besides these there were several other regular permutations, 

 which donot fall into any of the above classes. I have not observed 

 any interchanges in the tfse of gutturals, palatals, or sibilants, or 

 in the flat spirants. One child I knew of regularly interchanged 

 the trilled spirants, as in "I rost my ling" (=1 lost my ring). 



The speech of children shows all the features which, in standard 

 language, we consider as the product of phonetic decay in the 

 various forms of aphoeresis, syncope, and apocope. The omission 

 in both cases is due to the same cause, namely, the excessive 

 effort that would be required to articulate the sounds. 



As far as my observation goes, children rarely add new elements 

 in sounding words. Transposition, however, is not uncommon; 

 O. regularly said kit for tick and krunt for trunk. 



The ability to discriminate vocal tones, which infants possess 

 in a remarkable degree, is a potent factor in the acquisition of 

 language. This ability is manifested very early, showing itself 

 in looks of distress or outcries even, in response to harsh language, 

 and in a return to placidity when solter tones follow. Such 

 manifestations are, of course, instinctive, and are precisely of the 

 same nature as the exhibition of terror referred to as made by H. 

 on the eighth day of her life at the falling of a bottle to the floor. 

 Again, the child M. in her tenth month was trained to keep 

 away from a hot-air register by the use of the simple word 

 "burn," spoken to her several times with considerable intensity 

 of warning in the tones. A soothing effect is produced on chil- 

 dren not only by soft and musi.^al sounds, but by sibilation, 



