Note 31 — Chapter VIII · SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS

The views advanced in § 8 have some points in contact with the remarks found in Stern’s ch. xix, p. 300, only that I lay more stress on the arbitrary interpretation of the child’s meaningless syllables on the part of the grown-ups, and that I cannot approve his theory of the m syllables as ‘centripetal’ and the p syllables as ‘centrifugal affective-volitional natural sounds.’ Paul (P § 127) says that the nursery-language with its bowwow, papa, mama, etc., “is not the invention of the children; it is handed over to them just as any other language”; he overlooks the share children have themselves in these words, or in some of them; nor are they, as he says, formed by the grown-ups with a purely pedagogical purpose. Nor can I find that Wundt’s chapter “Angebliche worterfindung des kindes” (S 1. 273-287) contains decisive arguments. Curtius (K 88) thinks that Gr. patēr was first shortened into pâ and this then extended into páppa—but certainly it is rather the other way round.