O'Shea—The Child's Linguistic Development. 185 
It should be added that as development proceeds the indi¬ 
vidual acquires a more and more impersonal relation toward 
many objects and so in his speech he may reach the point where 
he can simply designate them or name them; that is, he can em¬ 
ploy the substantive in its grammatical function strictly. Again, 
a child early finds pleasure in the ability to recognize objects, as 
Groos has pointed out, and he always wishes to have others share 
his achievements with him, so he may and probably does often 
employ his words for the purpose of winning the applause of the 
alter, and not for the purpose of imparting an idea by naming 
an object, or predicating anything about it. That is, he uses his 
terms in a simple denotative way, without attempting to express 
his experience with the objects denoted. 
Before the completion of the second year usually, and in some 
cases as early as the eighteenth month, the child begins to ex¬ 
press himself in eliptical sentences, as, giving two of H’s ex¬ 
pressions, “doggie-high” (the dog is jumping over a high fence); 
“Nann-come” (I want Anna to come and help me). Now, are the 
differentiation of thought which we are making the basis of dif¬ 
ferentiation in speech? Viewed from without they appear to 
be; but in reality they are probably often mere mechanical imi¬ 
tations, with no subjective differentiation to correspond to the 
external differentiated form. I have often said “doggie-high” 
to TL, and she may be and probably at the outset is just copying 
my words. In her own mental processes there may be but little 
more differentiation with respect to this particular situation than 
when she employed the single w r ord “doggie” in reaction there¬ 
upon. Children from a year and a half on, constantly illustrate 
this principle in their speech for a number of months. They 
learn, as a matter of mechanical imitation, an expression like 
“birdies fly” and they use it not only when they see a bird fly¬ 
ing, but also when the see it sitting on a limb or picking 
worms from the ground. That is to say, the term fly may not 
denote a clear and definite particularization in the child’s 
thought though he uses it freely enough. It will not carry true 
verbal function until he employs it for the purpose of indicating 
a particular aspect or attitude of birds and other objects, and 
