188 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts , and Letters. 
larger and larger assortment of linguistic symbols, and of em¬ 
ploying them in the precise conventional manner, else he can not 
make himself understood. Here again the child and primitive 
man are on a level, as Powell, Romanes and others have pointed 
out. 
I think that so far as actual need is concerned, the child could 
go on for a long distance, say up to the sixth or seventh year 
ordinarily, neglecting the verb and particularly the copula in his 
sentences; but with the logical forms of the adult constantly 
ringing in his ears he comes to adopt them as a matter of con¬ 
vention at the outset, and not because he feels they are of any 
special service to him. The parent and governess and teacher 
are incessantly putting the standard forms before the novice, 
and forcing them upon his attention, and as a consequence he 
abandons his own original, abbreviated, gesture-symbol forms, 
and takes up with the conventional models. Just observe a child 
saying, for instance, 4 ‘Doggie—high’’ (The dog jumps, or is 
jumping, over a high fence) and notice the parent repeating 
after him “Doggie jumps high,” and asking the child to follow 
suit. This is going on incessantly in the first years of language 
learning; if the parent is not dictating conventional forms, then 
the brothers and sisters and playmates are. Of course, the con¬ 
ventional forms are sailing about the child all the time, even 
though the speakers are unconscious of his presence, and it is 
inevitable that he should in time come to imitate these forms in a 
more or less sub-conscious, mechanical way. So the child is not 
let alone to do as he chooses linguistically; the social milieu re¬ 
sorts to various devices to get him to abandon his primitive lin¬ 
guistic forms before he feels the need of it. Not only are the 
standard usages constantly thrust into his ear by all charged 
with his care and culture; but the people around him make gen¬ 
erous use of ridicule to hasten his progress in adopting the 
standard modes. Observe an eight-year old boy making fun of 
his three-year old brother for some of his childish phrases, and 
the importance of this force in urging the child to abandon his 
original expressions, though they serve him well enough, will be 
appreciated. 
