254 Animal Intelligence 
A child also meets frequently the situations ‘say dada,- 
‘say mama,’ ‘say good night’ and the like,! and is rewarded 
when his general babble produces something like the word 
spoken to him. He thus, by the law of effect, learns to re- 
spond to any ‘say’ situation by making some sound and to 
each of many ‘say’ situations by making an appropriate 
sound, and to feel satisfaction at duplicating these words 
when heard. According to the amount of such training, 
the tendency to respond to words spoken to him by mak- 
ing some sound may become very strong, and the number 
of successful duplications very large. Satisfaction may be 
so connected with saying words that the child practices 
them by himself orally and even in inner speech. The sec-. 
ond alternative relies upon the instinct of babbling, and the 
satisfaction of getting desirable effects from speech, either 
the effect which the word has by its meaning as a request 
(‘water,’ ‘milk,’ ‘take me outdoors’ and the like) or the 
effect which it has by its mere sound upon companions 
who notice, pet or otherwise reward a child for linguistic 
progress. 
There are many difficulties in the way of accepting the 
first alternative. First of all, no one can believe that all 
of a child’s speech is acquired by direct imitation. | On 
many occasions the process is undoubtedly one of the pro- 
duction of many sounds, irrespective of the model given, and 
the selection of the best one by parental reward.\ Any stu- 
dent who will try to get a child who is just beginning to 
speak, to say cat, dog and mouse and will record the 
sounds actually made by the child in the three cases, will 
find them very much alike. There will in fact be little 
1The ‘say,’ may be replaced by some bodily attitude, facial expression, 
or other verbal formula that identifies the situation as one to be responded 
to by speech, 
