Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/152

132 (meaning herself), she turns toward any picture that may be there, whether it be a painting or an engraving. Hence "baby" signifies, for her, some general notion, whatever paintings and engravings of persons or landscapes may possess in common; i. e., if I am not mistaken, "baby," in her mind, signifies something variegated in a shining frame. Indeed, it is plain that the objects painted or designed within the frames are so much Greek to her, while she must be deeply impressed by the glittering frame and the patches of color, light, and shade, within its border. Here, then, we have her first general term; the meaning she gives it is not ours, but nevertheless it is evidence of original work done by the infantile understanding. For, though we have supplied the word, we have not supplied the meaning.

(Age, fourteen months and three weeks.) The gains of the last six weeks have been notable: besides the word "baby" she now understands several others, and of these she pronounces five or six, giving to each a meaning of its own. Mere prattle is succeeded by a beginning of intentional and determinate language. The principal words pronounced by her now are papa, maman, tété (by which she means nurse); oua-oua (her term for dog), koko (hen, cock), dada (horse, wagon), mia (cat, kitten), kaka, and tem. She acquired earliest the two words papa and tem: this latter word is very curious, and well worthy of serious consideration.

For fifteen days she pronounced papa without a purpose, without a meaning, as simple prattle, and as an easy and amusing exercise of articulation. Later came association between this name and the image or perception; and then the portrait or the person of her father brought to her lips the sound papa, and this same word, when pronounced by another, awoke in her the memory, the mental image of her father. Between the two states just noticed there exists an insensible transition, so that, at certain times, the first state still persists after the second state has been attained; at times she still plays with a sound, though she understands its sense. This is very easily seen with respect to some of her later acquisitions, for instance the word kaka. This word she often repeats without purpose or intent, as prattle, much to the displeasure of her mother. Again, she frequently utters the word purposely, when occasion offers. Further it is evident that, as in the case of the word "baby," she has extended the meaning of this term. Thus, for instance, on seeing in a flowerbed the track of moistened earth left by a watering-pot, she repeated this word again and again with evident appreciation of its meaning. For her it signifies what wets.

She shows great capacity for imitating sounds. She has seen and listened to fowls, and now repeats their koko far more accurately than we can do it, with the guttural intonation of the animals themselves. This is simply a faculty pertaining to the windpipe, but she possesses another faculty which is far more striking, a faculty that is par