O'Shea—The Child's Linguistic Development. 187 
dependency in things of the mental commonwealth any more 
than there can be in things of the social commonwealth. 
The prominence which some grammarians ascribe to the verb 
in linguistic expression may warrant its receiving a little special 
attention at this point. Before the twenty-fourth month, as a 
rule, the child uses sentences of two or three words, but the verb 
is quite often omitted, and from my observations I should say 
that the novice can get along very handily without it. To illus¬ 
trate, M. at twenty-live months will say, “Mamma—milk,” 
(Mamma, I want my milk; or Mamma, have my milk brought 
in). Taking my glasses in her hand she will say, “Baby—nose” 
(I want to put them on baby's [my] nose). Watchng her nurse 
prepare her bath, she will repeat many times, “Baby—bath.” 
One may count instances of this kind literally by the hundred 
every day in the life of an active child from his second to his 
third or fourth birthday. The copula is „quite generally omitted 
in the beginning. A three-year old will say “My—(or me or 
perhaps I) hammering; (I am hammering); “Me—running;” 
“Me—playing horse” and so on ad libitum. So he will ask, 
‘ ‘ Where- —papa going ? ”, ‘ ‘ Where—papa been ? ”, “ Where—my 
book?”, “My dog—running?”, and so on. Helen Keller says 
in her Autobiography that when she was seven she used such ex¬ 
pressions as these: “Eyes—shut; sleep—no,” (Their eyes are 
shut”—speaking of puppies—“but they are not asleep”.) 
4 4 Strawberries—very good, 5 ’ and so on. 
It is not difficult to understand why the child should thus do 
violence to the logic of our sentences. He can convey his limited 
range of thought adequately without the copula; being an adept 
at gesture and intonation he can make these latter discharge the 
office of the former. Of course his expressions always relate to 
very definite concrete experiences, so that he can make himself 
intelligible even with an imperfect handling of our linguistic 
tools; but when he comes to deal with more abstract situations, 
where every detail of the thought to be conveyed must be sug¬ 
gested by his own expressions, receiving no aid from immediate 
conditions and occurences, as the child’s expressions come grad¬ 
ually to be concerned with complex experiences remote in time 
and place, then he will feel the need of having command of a 
