208 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
I>ermit him so to do. His parents, once he gets to using pro¬ 
nouns at all, keep putting the conventional forms before him 
whenever he uses a form incorrectly; his brothers and sisters and 
playmates make fun of him for his lack of conformity to environ¬ 
mental standards, and the teacher tries to habituate him in the 
use of the standard forms, and gives him rules for his guidance. 
These are all powerful corrective forces, and no child can long 
resist them, except in respect of the least important matters. 
Then simple imitation, where the child more or less unconsciously 
copies the models in his environment, is of immense importance 
in leading him to appropriate the various forms employed about 
him. It is suggestive to note in this connection that when an 
adult tries to write or speak a foreign language with which he 
is not very familiar he experiences much trouble in mastering 
the cases of his pronouns. If he is just a novice one form will 
answer for all cases, and one of the difficult tasks in using a for¬ 
eign tongue with ease is to gain facility in employing the right 
form of the pronoun in different situations; and of course, this 
principle applies to other parts of speech than pronouns. 
