204 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts, and Letters. 
scream and strike at his brother who appropriates his food or 
playthings, you cannot doubt that he possesses a rudimentary, 
undifferentiated sense of ‘ ‘ mine. ’ ’ When, again, this same child 
offers his father a taste of his sugar-lump, and exclaims 
“Ndobbin,” 'ndobbin” with interrogative intonations, he is 
certainly acting out the question “Will you have some sugar?” 
The you as contrasted with 1 is involved in the child’s action, 
though he can utter not a syllable to denote the distinction. 
Further, when the child’s brother performs tricks for the babe, 
and the latter turns to the father or other person, and pointing 
at the brother laughs at him and gabbles about him,—in a reac¬ 
tion of this sort the idea of he, or possibly it, is clearly involved* 
There is a third person in the case, who is not now in vital 
relations with the speaker and listener. He is being talked at) out, 
not to. In this latter situation the child shows in his reaction, 
not reflectively, an appreciation of all three persons in their 
grammatical relations to him, so to speak. 
We have seen how, in the course of expressive development, 
verbal symbols come gradually to take up the function which 
had been originally discharged by gesture and pantomime; and 
the principle obtains in respect of pronominal as of all other 
forms of linguistic function. In the beginning the child desig¬ 
nates persons and things by gesture, and pronominal function 
in this stage might be said, perhaps, to be demonstrative. Even 
when he wishes attention turned upon himself he indicates it 
by characteristic bodily attitudes and contortions and vocal 
demonstrations, saying, in effect, “this person needs your help.” 
But as development proceeds,, demonstrativeness in linguistic 
function declines, and pure symbolization increases; and in the 
matter of pronouns it results that terms introduced which 
not so much point out or demonstrate as name or denote 
merely. This is true, of course, of racial as of individual 
evolution; to the primitive mind things must be made very ob¬ 
jective, concrete, explicit, but with mental development simple 
suggestion becomes continuously more efficient. In other words, 
language becomes ever more abstract, which means relieved of 
direct, concrete reference. 
In his pronominal evolution the child passes first from the 
