Volume 9 / Part 2 — CHAPTER XVII. (continued 2)

If the first germs of words, after ideas have begun to become clear by means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category belongs the comparative hocher for höher in the sentence hocher bauen (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request when playing with building-stones). The understanding of the comparative is plainly manifest in this. When, therefore, the same child in his fifth year, to the improper question, "Whom do you like better, papa or mamma?" answers, "Papa and mamma," we should not infer a lack of that understanding, as many do (e. g., Heyfelder); but the decision is impossible to the child. Just so in the case of the question, "Would you rather have the apple or the pear?"

Other inventions of my child were the verb messen for "mit dem Messer schneiden" (to cut with the knife); schiffern, i. e., "das Schiff bewegen" (move the ship), for "rudern," (row). And the preference of the weak inflection on the part of all children is a proof that after the appropriation of a small number of words through imitation, independent—always logical—changes of formation are undertaken. Gegebt, gegeht, getrinkt (gived, goed, drinked), have never been heard by the child; but "gewebt, geweht, gewinkt" (as in English, waved, wafted, beckoned), have been known to him as models (or other formations corresponding to these). Yet this is by no means to say that every mutilation or transformation the child proposes is a copy after an erroneously selected model; rather the child's imagination has a wide field here and acts in manifold fashion, especially by combinations. "My teeth-roof pains me," said a boy who did not yet know the word "palate." Another in his fourth year called the road (Weg) the "go" (Gehe). A child of three years used the expression, "Just grow me" (wachs mich einmal) for "Just see how I have grown" (Sieh einmal wie ich gewachsen bin) (Lindner). Such creations of the childish faculty of combination, arising partly through blending, partly through transference, are collected in a neat pamphlet, "Zur Philosophie der Kindersprache," by Agathon Keber, 1868. The most of them, however, are from a later time of life than that here treated of. So it is with the two "heretical" utterances communicated by Rösch. A child said unterblatte (under-leaf) for "Oblate," because he saw the wafer (Oblate) slipped under the leaf of paper (Blatt); and he called the "American chair," "Herr-Decaner-chair," because somebody who was called "Herr Decan" used to sit in it. Here may be seen the endeavor to put into the acoustic impression not understood a meaning. These expressions are not inventions, but they are evidence of intellect. They can not, of course, appear in younger children without knowledge of words, because they are transformations of words.

On the other hand it is of the greatest importance for the understanding of the first stage of the use of words in their real significance, after the acquirement of them has once begun, to observe how many different ideas the child announces by one and the same verbal expression. Here are some examples: Tuhl (for Stuhl, chair) signifies—1. "My chair is gone"; 2. "The chair is broken"; 3. "I want to be lifted into the chair"; 4. "Here is a chair." The child (Steinthal's) says (in the twenty-second month), when he sees or hears a barking dog, bellt (barks), and thinks he has by that word designated the whole complex phenomenon, the sight-perception of the dog and of a particular dog, and the sound-perception; but he says bellt also when he merely hears the dog. No doubt the memory-image of the dog he has seen is then revived for him.

Through this manifold significance of a word, which is a substitute for a whole sentence, is exhibited a much higher activity of the intellect than appears in the mutilation and new formation of words having but one meaning to designate a sense-impression, for, although in the latter is manifested the union of impressions into perceptions and also of qualities into concepts, wherein an unconscious judgment is involved, yet a clear judgment is not necessarily connected with them. The union of concepts into conscious clear judgments is recognized rather in the formation of a sentence, no matter whether this is expressed by one word or by several words.

In connection with this an error must be corrected that is wide-spread. It consists in the assumption that all children begin to speak with nouns, and that these are followed by verbs. This is by no means the case. The child daily observed by me used an adjective for the first time in the twenty-third month in order to express a judgment, the first one expressed in the language of those about him. He said "hot" for "The milk is too hot." In general, the appropriation and employment of words for the first formation of sentences depends, in the first instance, upon the action of the adults in the company of the child. A good example of this is furnished by an observation of Lindner, whose daughter in her fourteenth month first begged with her hands for a piece of apple, upon which the word "apple" was distinctly pronounced to her. After she had eaten the apple she repeated the request, re-enforcing her gesture this time by the imitated sound appn, and her request was again granted. Evidently encouraged by her success, the child from that time on used appn for "eat, I want to eat," as a sign of her desire to eat in general, because those about her "accepted this signification and took the word stamped by her upon this concept for current coin, else it would very likely have been lost." This also confirms my statement (p. 85) that a child easily learns to speak with logical correctness with wrong words. He also speaks like the deaf-mute with logical correctness with quite a different arrangement of words from that of his speech of a later period. Thus the child just mentioned, in whom "the inclination to form sentences was manifest from the twenty-second month," said, "hat die Olga getrinkt," when she had drunk!

But every child learns at first not only the language of those in whose immediate daily companionship he grows up, but also at first the peculiarities of these persons. He imitates the accent, intonation, dialect, as well as the word, so that a Thuringian child may be surely distinguished from a Mecklenburg child even in the second and third year, and, at the same time, we may recognize the peculiarities of the speech of its mother or nurse, with whom it has most intercourse. This phenomenon, the persistence of dialects and of peculiarities of speech in single families, gives the impression, on a superficial observation, of being something inherited; whereas, in fact, nothing is inherited beyond the voice through inheritance of the organic peculiarities of the mechanism of phonation. For everything else completely disappears when a child learns to speak from his birth in a foreign community.

Hereditary we may, indeed, call the characteristic of humanity, speech; hereditary, also, is articulation in man, and the faculty of acquiring any articulate language is innate. But beyond this the tribal influence does not reach. If the possibility of learning to speak words phonetically is wanting because ear or tongue refuses, then another language comes in as a substitute—that of looks, gestures, writing, tactile images—then not Broca's center, but another one is generated. So that the question whether a speech-center already exists in the alalic child must be answered in the negative; the center is formed only when the child hears speech, and, if he does not hear speech, no center is developed. In this case the ganglionic cells of the posterior third of the third frontal convolution are otherwise employed, or they suffer atrophy. In learning to speak, on the contrary, there is a continuous development, first of the sound-center, then of the syllable-center, then of the word-center and the dictorium. The brain grows through its own activity.