O'Shea—The Child's Linguistic Development. 207 
Hall’s 1 boy used his first; Rzesnitzek 2 says that the possessive 
form mine is first used, while von Pfeil 3 thinks that the pronouns 
denoting second person are first mastered; then those denoting 
third person, and last of all come those denoting the first person. 
In Chamberlain’s 4 account of the linguistic development of his 
child, “I” and “my” appear very frequently after the begin¬ 
ning of the third year, but the other forms are not in evidence. 
Preyer 5 observed that his son, Axel, in his thirty-second month 
used “I” meaning by it “you.” In the thirty-third month 
came such expressions as “das will ich!” “das mocht ich.” 
However, before this, in the twenty-ninth month, the objective 
form of the third person was used, “gib mir,” and “biite heb 
mich herauf.” The boy often used the third person, though, 
in designating himself, as when the father would ask “Wo ist 
Axel?” the latter would respond “da ist er wieder .” 
These citations will perhaps suffice to indicate that there is no 
certain and invariable order followed by all children in the em¬ 
ployment of the personal pronouns. In my own observations 
my has been the first form to be adopted. In every case it came 
before I. It was used in such relations as the following: My 
want to do this or that; my feel bad; that is my pencil or apple, 
or what not; take my to bed or out of doors. The form mine 
came considerably later than my, and I still later. To my mind 
the situations involving the use of my aremiore concrete, more 
obvious than those involving 7, and it seems reasonable that it 
should first appear, and once it gets started it will serve for me, 
mine, and 1 for a time. The use from the beginning of all forms 
of the pronouns, as given in some of the vocabularies, appears to 
me very remarkable, and quite in contrast to the child’s usual 
method of procedure in similar situations. 
Why does the child not settle upon one form permanently? 
For the very effective reason that his social environment will not 
1 Op. cit., p. 606. 
2 Zur Frage der Psychischen EntwicTcelung der Eindersprache (Bres¬ 
lau, 1899), p. 35. 
3 Wie lernt Mann eine Sprache, p. 5. 
4Studies of a Child; Ped Sem ., Vol. XI, pp. 264-291. 
& Op. cit., p. 202. 
