O’Shea—The Child’s Linguistic Development. 193 
tudes toward things denoted by this term. The children 
from these two homes will have quite different bases for the em¬ 
ployment of this adjective; and the principle applies to the de¬ 
velopmental history of all qualifying terms. 1 
It may sound like a commonplace to say that the adjectives 
which are earliest used relate to the impressive characteristics 
(depending upon the child's peculiar experience), of the objects 
with which he has direct, vital relations. The peculiar charac¬ 
teristics of different articles of food are among the very first to 
become differentiated, and designated by separate terms, 2 so that 
the adjectives appearing first in the vocabulary are such as 
4 ‘nice,” “sweet,” “bad,” “hot,” “good,” “cold,” and the like. 
Some of the terms descriptive of the child’s experience with food 
apply also to experience with other objects, and it happens that 
these special terms become more prominent than any others. 
Large things early impress the child deeply, and his social en¬ 
vironment intensifies his natural tendency in this respect by lay¬ 
ing special emphasis upon big things in stories, and in all repre¬ 
sentations and descriptions of the child’s surroundings. So 
“big,” “great,” “awful,” and the like, early acquire promi¬ 
nence in his vocabulary, as do “little,” “small,” “tiny,” and 
similar terms. So if one should go through with all the types of 
experiences of the child at different stages of his evolution he 
would find that intelligent adjectival function depends directly 
upon the degree to which particular attributes of objects become 
differentiated from their general characteristics because of the 
new relations which the individual, as an inevitable consequence 
of his development, comes constantly to assume toward them. 
Terms denoting abstract moral qualities in things appear in the 
vocabulary last of all, unless such terms are imitated in a me¬ 
chanical way. 3 Of course, it is utterly impossible to tell just 
il discuss this matter in detail in the chapter on The Development 
of Verbal Signification. 
2 It will be appreciated, of course, that long before the cEild uses 
conventional terms to denote the qualities of his food, for example, he 
indicates his appreciation by gesture and facial expression with char¬ 
acteristic interjectional expression of rich variety and complexity. 
3 All observers of child linguistics give instances in illustration of 
this principle; but see Chamberlain (Ped. Sem., 1904, Vol. XI, p. 278). 
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