Transformations of Our Words
As is well known the first tentatives in the use of the common speech-forms are very rough. The child in reproducing transforms, and these transformations are often curious and sufficiently puzzling.
The most obvious thing about these first infantile renderings of the adult’s language is that they are a simplification. This applies to all words alike. Monosyllables if involving a complex mass of sound are usually reduced, as when ‘dance’ is shortened to ‘da’. This clearly illustrates the difficulty of certain sound-combinations, a point to be touched on presently. More striking is the habitual reduction of dissyllables and polysyllables. Here we note that the child concentrates his effort on the reproduction of a part only of the syllabic series, which part he may of course give but very imperfectly. The shortening tends to go to the length of reducing to a monosyllable. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bik,’ ‘Constance’ ‘tun,’ ‘candle’ ‘ka,’ ‘bread and butter’ ‘bup’ or ‘bŭ’. Polysyllables, though occasionally cut down to monosyllables, as when ‘hippopotamus’ became ‘pots,’ are more frequently reduced to dissyllables, as when ‘periwinkle’ was shortened to ‘pinkle’. Handkerchief is a trying word for the English child, and for obvious reasons has to be learnt. It was reduced by the eldest child of a family to ‘hankish,’ by the two next to ‘hamfisch’ and by the last two to ‘hanky’. The little girl M. also reduced the last two syllables to ‘fish,’ making the sound ‘hanfish’.
There seems to be no simple law governing these reductions of verbal masses. The accentuated syllable, by exciting most attention, is commonly the one reproduced, as when ‘nasturtium’ became ‘turtium’.77 In the case of long words the position of a syllable at the beginning or at the end of the word seems to give an advantage in this competition of sounds, the former by impressing the sound as the first heard (compare the way in which we note and remember the initial sound of a name),78 the latter by impressing it as the last heard, and therefore best retained. The unequal articulatory facility of the several sound-combinations making up the word may also have an influence on this unconscious selection. I think it not unlikely, too, that germs of a kind of æsthetic preference for certain sounds as new, striking or fine, may co-operate here.79
Such simplification of words is from the first opposed, and tends in time to be counteracted, by the growth of a feeling for their general form as determined by the number of syllables, as well as the distribution of stress and any accompanying alterations of tone or pitch. The infant’s first imitations of the sounds ‘good-bye,’ ‘all gone,’ and so forth, by couples which preserve hardly anything of the articulatory character, though they indicate the syllabic form, position of stress, and rising and falling inflection, illustrate the early development of this feeling. Hence we find in general an attempt to reproduce the number of syllables, and also to give the proper distribution of stress. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bítchic,’ ‘cellar’ ‘sítoo,’ ‘umbrella’ ‘nobélla,’ ‘elephant’ ‘étteno,’ or (by a German child) ‘ewebón,’ ‘kangaroo’ ‘kógglegoo,’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘ippenpótany,’ and so forth.80
As suggested above there goes from the first with the cutting down of the syllabic series a considerable alteration of the single constituent sounds. The vowel sounds are rarely omitted; yet they may be greatly modified, and these modifications occur regularly enough to suggest that the child finds certain nuances of vowel sounds comparatively hard to reproduce. Thus the short ă in hat, and the long ī (ai), seem to be acquired only after considerable practice.81 But it is among the consonants that most trouble arises. Many of these, as the sibilants or ‘hisses,’ s, sh, the various l and r sounds, the dentals, the “point-teeth-open” th and dh (in ‘thin,’ ‘this’), the back or guttural ‘stops,’ i.e., k and hard g, and others as j or soft g (as in ‘James,’ ‘gem’), appear, often at least, to cause difficulty at the beginning of the speech period. With these must be reckoned such combinations as st, str.
In many cases the difficult sounds are merely dropped. Thus ‘poor’ may become ‘poo,’ ‘look’ ‘ook,’ ‘Schulter’ (German) ‘Ulter’. In the case of awkward combinations this dropping is apt to be confined to the difficult sound, provided, that is to say, the other is manageable alone. Thus ‘dance’ becomes ‘dan,’ ‘trocken’ (German) becomes ‘tokko’. More particularly s and sh are apt to be omitted before other consonants. Thus ‘stair’ becomes ‘tair,’ ‘sneeze’ ‘neeze,’ ‘schneiden’ (German) ‘neida,’ and so forth.
Along with such lame omissions we have the more vigorous procedure of substitutions. In certain cases there seems little if any kinship between the sounds or the articulatory actions by which they are produced. At the early stage more particularly almost any manageable sound seems to do duty as substitute. The early-acquired labials, including the labio-dental f come in as serviceable ‘hacks’ at this stage. What we call lisping is indeed exemplified in this class of infantile substitutions. Children have been observed to say ‘fank’ for ‘thank’ and ‘mouf’ for ‘mouth,’ ‘feepy’ for ‘sleepy,’ ‘poofie’ for ‘pussy,’ ‘wiver’ for ‘river,’ ‘Bampe’ for ‘Lampe’ (German). The dentals, too, d and t, are turned to all kinds of vicarious service. Thus we find ‘ribbon’ rendered by ‘dib,’ ‘gum’ by ‘dam,’ ‘Greete’ (German) by ‘Deete,’ ‘Gummi’ (German) by ‘Dummi,’ ‘cut’ by ‘tut,’ and ‘klopfen’ (German) by ‘topfen’. Similarly ‘gee-gee’ (horse), which oddly enough was first rendered by the child M. as ‘dee-gee,’ is altered to ‘dee-dee’. I find too that new sounds are apt to be put to this miscellaneous use. Thus one child after learning the aspirate (h) at two years not only brought it out with great emphasis in its proper place but began to use it as a substitute for other and unmanageable sounds. Thus he would say, ‘hie down on hofa’ for ‘lie down on sofa’. The aspirate is further used in place of sh, as when ‘shake’ was rendered by ‘hate,’ and of st, as when Preyer’s boy called ‘Stern’ ‘Hern’. In other cases we see that the little linguist is trying to get as near as possible to the sound, and such approximations are an interesting sign of progress. Thus in one case ‘chatterbox’ was rendered by ‘jabberwock,’ in another case ‘dress’ by ‘desh,’ in another (Preyer’s boy), ‘Tisch’ (German) by ‘Tiss’.82
Besides omissions and substitution of sounds, occasional insertions are said to occur. According to one set of observations r may be inserted after the broad a, as when ‘pocket’ was rendered by ‘barket’. A cockney is apt to do the same, as when he talks of having a ‘barth’ (bath). Yet this observation requires to be verified.
These alterations of articulate sound by the child remind one of the changes which the languages of communities undergo. We know, indeed, that these changes are due to imperfect imitation by succeeding generations of learners.83 Hence we need not be surprised to find now and again analogies between these nursery transformations and those of words in the development of languages. In reproducing the sounds which he hears a child often illustrates a law of adult phonetic change. Thus changes within the same class of sounds, as the frequent alteration of ‘this’ into ‘dis,’ clearly correspond with those modifications recognised in Grimm’s Law. So, too, the common substitution of a dental for a guttural has its parallel in the changes of racial language.84 Nobody again can note the transformation of n into m before f in the form ‘hamfish’ for ‘handkerchief’ without thinking of the Greek change of συν into συμ before β, and like changes. Philologists may probably find many other parallels. One of them tells me that his little girl, on rendering sh by the guttural h, reproduced a change in Spanish pronunciation. M. Egger compares a child’s rendering of ‘trop’ (French) by ‘crop’ with the transformation of the Latin ‘tremere’ into ‘craindre’.
I have assumed here that children’s defective reproduction of our verbal sounds is the result of inability to produce certain sounds and not due to the want of a discrimination of the sounds by the ear. This may seem strange in the light of Preyer’s statement that the earlier impulsive babbling includes most, if not all, of the sounds required later on for articulation. This may turn out to be an exaggeration, yet there is no doubt, I think, that certain sounds, including some as the initial l which are common in the earlier babbling stage, are not produced at the beginning of the articulatory period. As the avoidance of these occurs in all children alike it seems reasonable to infer that they involve difficult muscular combinations in the articulatory organ. At the same time it seems going too far to say, as Schultze does, that the order of acquisition of sounds corresponds with the degree of difficulty. The very variability of this order in the case of different children shows that there is no such simple correspondence as this.85
The explanation of those early omissions and alterations is probably a rather complex matter. To begin with, the speech-organs of a child may lose special aptitudes by the development of other and opposed aptitudes. A friend of mine, a physiologist, tells me that his little boy who said ‘ma-ma’ (but not ‘da-da’) at ten months lost at the age of nineteen months the use of m, for which he regularly substituted b. He suggests that the nasal sound m, though easy for a child in the sucking stage and accustomed to close the lips, may become difficult later on through the acquisition of open sounds. It is worth considering whether this principle does not apply to other inabilities. This, however, is a question for the science of phonetics.
We must remember, further, that it is one thing to carry out an articulatory movement as a child of nine months carries it out, ‘impulsively,’ through some congenitally arranged mode of exciting the proper motor centre, another thing to carry it out volitionally, i.e., in order to produce a desired result. This last means that the sound-effect of the movement has been learned, that the image or representation of it has been brought into definite connexion with a particular impulse, viz., that of carrying out the required movement: and this is now known to depend on the formation of some definite neural connexion between the auditory and the motor regions of the speech-centre. This process is clearly more complex than the first instinctive utterance, and may be furthered or hindered by various conditions. Thus a child’s own spontaneous babblings may not have sufficed to impress a particular sound on the memory; in which case his acquisition of it will be favoured or otherwise by the frequency with which it is produced by others in his hearing. It is probable that differences in the range and accuracy of production of sounds by nurse and mother tell from the first. The differences observable in the order of acquisition of sounds among children may be in part due to this, and not merely to differences in the speech-organ. It is probable, too, that children’s attention may be especially called to certain sounds or sound-groups, either because of a preferential liking for the sounds themselves, or because of a special need of them as useful names. M.’s mother assures me that the child seemed to dislike particular sounds as j, which she could and did occasionally pronounce, though she was given to altering them.86 Another lady writes that her boy at the age of twenty-two months surprised her by suddenly bringing out the combination ‘scissors’. He had just begun to use scissors in cutting up paper, and so had acquired a practical interest in this sound-mass.
We may now pass to another of the commonly recognised defects of early articulation, viz., the transposition of sounds or metathesis. Sometimes it is two contiguous sounds which are transposed, as when ‘star’ is rendered by ‘tsar’ and ‘spoon’ by ‘psoon’. Here the motive of the change is evidently to facilitate the combination. We have a parallel to this in the use of ‘aks’ (ax) for ‘ask,’ a transposition which was not long since common enough in the West of England.87 In other transpositions sounds are shifted further from their place. Preyer quotes a case in which there was a dislocation of vowel sounds, viz., in the transformation of ‘bite’ (German) into ‘beti’.88 Here there seems to be no question of avoiding a difficult combination. Other examples are the following: ‘hoogshur’ for ‘sugar’ (one of the first noticed at the age of two); ‘mungar’ for ‘grandmamma,’ ‘punga’ for ‘grandpapa,’ and ‘natis’ for ‘nasty’ (boy between eighteen and twenty-four months); and ‘boofitul’ for ‘beautiful’. Here again we have an analogy to defective speech in adults. When a man is very tired he is liable to precisely similar inversions of order. The explanation seems to be that the right group of sounds may present itself to the speaker’s consciousness without any clear apprehension of their temporal order. Perhaps quasi-æsthetic preferences play a part here too. The child M. seems to have preferred the sequence m-n to n-m, saying ‘jaymen’ for ‘geranium’, ‘burman’ for ‘laburnum’.
Another interesting feature in this early articulation is the impulse to double sounds, to get a kind of effect of assonance or of rhyme by a repetition of sound or sound-group. The first and simplest form of this is where a whole sound-mass or syllable is iterated, as in the familiar ‘ba-ba,’ ‘gee-gee’ ‘ni-ni’ (for nice). Some children frequently turn monosyllables into reduplications, making book ‘boom-boom’ and so forth. It is, however, in attempting dissyllables that the reduplication is most common. Thus ‘naughty’ becomes ‘na-na,’ ‘faster’ ‘fa-fa,’ ‘Julia’ ‘dum-dum,’ and so forth, where the repeated syllable displaces the second original syllable and so serves to retain something of the original word-form. In some cases the second and unaccented syllable is selected for reduplication, as in the instance quoted by Perez, ‘peau-peau’ for ‘chapeau’. Such reduplications are sometimes aided by kinship of sound, as when the little girl M. changed ‘purple’ into its primitive form ‘purpur’.
These early reduplications are clearly a continuation of the repetitions observable in the earlier babbling, and grow out of the same motive, the impulse to go on doing a thing, and the pleasure of repetition and self-imitation. As is well known, these reduplications have their parallel in many of the names used by savage tribes.89
In addition to these palpable reduplications of sound-masses we have repetitions of single sounds, the repeated sound being substituted for another and foreign one. This answers to what is called in phonetics ‘assimilations’.90 In the majority of cases the assimilation is ‘progressive,’ the change being carried out by a preceding on a succeeding sound. Examples are ‘Kikie’ for ‘Kitty,’ and ‘purpur’ for ‘purple’. This last transformation, though it was made by the little daughter of a distinguished philologist, was quite innocent of classical influence, and was clearly motived by the childish love of reduplication of sound. In many cases the substitution of an easy for a difficult sound seems to be determined in part by assimilation, as when ‘another’ was rendered by ‘annunner,’ ‘gateau’ (French) by ‘ca-co’. The assimilation seems, too, sometimes to work “regressively,” as when ‘thick’ becomes ‘kick,’ ‘Bonnie Dundee’ ‘Bun-dun,’ and ‘tortue’ (French) ‘tu-tu,’ in which two last reduplication is secured approximately or completely by change of vowel.91 There seem also to be cases of what may be called partial assimilation, that is, a tendency to transform a sound into one of the same class as the first. “If (writes a mother of her boy) a word began with a labial he generally concluded it with a labial, making ‘bird,’ for example, ‘bom’.” But these cases are not, perhaps, perfectly clear examples of assimilation.
Along with the tendency to reduplicate syllabic masses, we see a disposition to use habitually certain favourite syllables as terminations, more particularly the pet ending ‘ie’. Thus ‘sugar’ becomes ‘sugie,’ ‘picture’ ‘pickie,’ and so forth. One child was so much in love with this syllable as to prefer it even to the common repetition of sound in onomatopoetic imitation, naming the hen not ‘tuck-tuck’ as one might expect, but ‘tuckie’.
What strikes one in these early modifications of our verbal sounds by the child is the care for metrical qualities and the comparative disregard for articulatory characteristics. The number of syllabic sounds, the distribution of stress, as well as the rise and fall of vocal pitch, are the first things to be attended to, and these are, on the whole, carefully rendered when the constituent sounds are changed into other and often very unlike ones, and the order of the sounds is reversed. Again, the comparative fidelity in rendering the vowel sounds illustrates the prominence of the metrical or musical quality in childish speech. The love of reduplication, of the effect of assonance and rhyme, illustrates the same point. This may be seen in some of the more playful sayings of the child M., as ‘Babba hiding, Ice (Alice) spiding (spying)’.
As I have dwelt at some length on the defective articulation of children, I should like to say that their early performances, so far from being a discredit to them, are very much to their credit. I, at least, have often been struck with the sudden bringing forth without any preparatory audible trial of difficult combinations, and with a wonderful degree of accuracy. A child can often articulate better than he is wont to do. The little girl M., when one year six months, being asked teasingly to say ‘mudder,’ said with a laugh ‘mother,’ quite correctly—but only on this one occasion. The precision which a child, even in the second year, will often give to our vocables is quite surprising, and reminds me of the admirable exactness which, as I have observed, other strangers to our language, and more especially perhaps Russians, introduce into their articulation, putting our own loose treatment of our language to the blush. This precision, acquired as it would seem without any tentative practice, points, I suspect, to a good deal of silent rehearsal, nascent groupings of muscular actions which are not carried far enough to produce sound.
The gradual development of the child’s articulatory powers, as indicated partly by the precision of the sounds formed, partly by their differentiation and multiplication, is a matter of great interest. At the beginning, when he is able to reproduce only a small portion of a vocable, there is of course but little differentiation. Thus it has been remarked by more than one observer, that one and the same sound (so far at least as our ears can judge) will represent different lingual signs, ‘ba’ standing in the case of one child for both ‘basket’ and ‘sheep’ (‘ba lamb’), and ‘bo’ for ‘box’ and ‘bottle’. Little by little the sound grows differentiated into a more definite and perfect form, and it is curious to note the process of gradual evolution by which the first rude attempt at articulate form gets improved and refined. Thus, writes a mother, “at eighteen to twenty months ’milk’ was ’gink,’ at twenty-one months it was ’ming,’ and soon after two years it was a sound between ’mik’ and ’milk’.” The same child in learning to say ‘lion’ went through the stages ‘ŭn’ (one year eight months), ‘ion’ (two years), and ‘lion’ (two years and eight months). The little girl M., in learning the word ‘breakfast,’ advanced by the stages ‘bepper,’ ‘beffert,’ ‘beffust’. In an example given by Preyer, ‘grosspapa’ (grandpapa) began as ‘opapa,’ this passed into ‘gropapa,’ and this again into ‘grosspapa’. In another case given by Schultze the word ‘wasser’ (pronounced ‘vasser’) went through the following stages: (1) ‘vavaff,’ (2) ‘fafaff,’ (3) ‘vaffaff,’ (4) ‘vasse,’ and (5) ‘vasser’. In this last we have an interesting illustration of a struggle between the imitative impulse to reproduce the exact sound and the impulse to reduplicate or repeat the sound, this last being very apparent in the introduction of the second v and the ff in the first stage, and in the substitution of the f’s for v’s under the influence of the dominant final sound in the second stage. The student of the early stages of language growth might, one imagines, find many suggestive parallels in these developmental changes in children’s articulation.
The rapidity of articulatory progress might be measured by a careful noting of the increase in the number of vocables mastered from month to month. Although Preyer and others have given lists of vocables used at particular ages, and parents have sent me lists, I have met with no methodical record of the gradual extension of the articulate field. It is obvious that any observations under this head, save in the very early stages, can only be very rough. No observer of a talkative child, however attentive, can make sure of all the word-sounds used. It is to be noted, too, as we have seen above, that a child will sometimes show that he can master a sound and will even make a temporary use of it, without retaining it as a part of the permanent linguistic stock.92