190 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts, and Letters. 
priety have used “Oh!” in place of kee. One who follows a 
child about as he learns new objects cannot escape the conviction 
that his expressions all have for a time at least an interjectional 
quality, as the grammarians use the term. It is interesting to 
note in this connection that anthropologists, as Aston, 1 e. g., 
maintain that human speech originated in certain natural cries, 
—hisses, shouts, grunts,—and these in time became interjections. 
Interjections were in the beginning then the only parts of 
speech; all others were included in them. Whether this position 
can be defended or not, it is at least evident to me that inter- 
jectional speech comes very easy to the young, and it is promi¬ 
nent up until the adolescent period. One may hear children 
(boys especially, I think), from five to twelve incessantly using 
expletives such as Gee Whiz! Giminy Crickets! and so on 
through a long list. They are all employed, it seems, in expres¬ 
sion of strong feeling, or to emphasize a thought put forward in 
conventional fashion; and the child’s attitude is in some measure 
interjectional, even if he does not use the particular forms recog¬ 
nized by formal grammar. He can use “horse” with interjec¬ 
tional content and function about as readily and effectively as 
“Oh!” or “Whew!”, or “Hurrah!” In the course of develop¬ 
ment this exclamatory or interpectional coloring of the child’s 
language gradually declines after the age of seven or eight, say, 
so far as ordinary speech is concerned, though throughout the 
whole period of childhood, and to a less extent during youth, in¬ 
terjectional function is much in evidence. One result of devel¬ 
opment is to gradually confine interjectional function to the con¬ 
ventional terms, whereas in the beginning, as I have said above, 
every term may have a greater or less degree of interjectional 
quality. 
4. ADJECTIVAL AND ADVERBIAL FUNCTION IN EARLY SPEECH. 
Let us glance for a moment now at the place of qualifying and 
particularizing terms in early linguistic activity. The term 
modifier suggests differentiation in mental content, and we should 
not expect to find limiting terms and phrases employed, intelli- 
i See the London Journ. Anthr. Inst., Vol. XXIII, pp. 332-362. 
