Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/652

634 be distinguished in the babblings. Gradually the voice became more steadily modulated. When the child wanted some new thing, besides stretching out its arms and looking at it, it signified its desire by the same sound it had been accustomed to utter when it wanted to be nursed. At the same time the syllables pa, at, ta, ha, da, ma, na, common to children of all nations, were uttered plainly and frequently. They had no meaning, and were only the consequences of the involuntary exercises of the vocal apparatus.

Very imperfect imitations of sounds were noticed toward the end of the first six months. The power of distinguishing words when spoken began to appear at about the same time. The baby turned its head when it was called, and it was taught to do such little acts as give its hand when asked to. Still, the store of words it knew was not larger or more comprehensive than that of a well-trained hunting-dog. The enormous intellectual interval between the child and the trained animal was manifested less by its connection of definite objects with certain changes of sound than by its feeble attempts to repeat the syllable or the word when the impression recurred to which they corresponded.

Great progress is made in the imitation of sounds after the third half-year. Numerous objects are correctly pointed out in answer to questions, and many words are spoken with a broken articulation, but in a correct sense. The child's advancement in the power of forming notions becomes wonderfully rapid, and it learns to connect its ideas, to compare and reflect before it has acquired the use of any considerable number of words, and while it still expresses its thoughts by gestures more than by words.

The powers of articulation become well developed at the beginning of the fourth half-year, although the child may still not be able to pronounce all the sounds of his language; but an intelligent child is able to understand many more words than he can repeat, and will also repeat, in a parrot-like way, many words that he does not understand, if they please him or he finds that his speaking them pleases others.

The organs of articulation have a wonderful flexibility, putting it into the power of the child to learn to pronounce the sounds of any language which may be taught him with an ease and accuracy which can never be gained later in life. The child's own language is, however, crude and elementary, consisting in the main of inarticulate sounds, looks, gestures, parts of words that are mangled beyond all recognition, and onomatopoetic expressions. The way he learns to speak is incomprehensible to the keenest observer. He cries, laughs, babbles, smacks, crows, squeals, and understands what is said to him long before he speaks; and after he has touched, looked, listened, and tasted innumerable times, after he has amused himself and got tired with a thousand efforts to imitate, after he has been at first unable to repeat, and often would not repeat words, then he speaks spontaneously. At first he speaks in such a way as to make a single word answer for