Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin - Otto Jespersen

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we in writing one and the same letter exaggerate the similarity.

      The two th sounds offer some difficulties and are often imitated as f and v respectively, as in ‘frow’ and ‘muvver’ for ‘throw’ and ‘mother’; others say ‘ze’ or ‘de’ for ‘the.’ Hilary M. (2.0) has great difficulty with th and s; th usually becomes [ʃ], [beʃ, ti·ʃ, ʃri·] for ‘Beth,’ ‘teeth,’ ‘three’; s becomes [ʃ], e.g. [franʃiʃ, ʃti·m] for ‘Francis,’ ‘steam’; in the same way z becomes [ʒ] as in [lʌbʒ, bouʒ] for ‘loves,’ ‘Bowes’; sw becomes [fw] as in [fwiŋ, fwi·t] for ‘swing,’ ‘sweet.’ She drops l in consonantal combinations, e.g. [ki·n, kaim, kɔk, ʃi·p] for ‘clean,’ ‘climb,’ ‘clock,’ ‘sleep.’

      Sometimes it requires a phonetician’s knowledge to understand the individual sound-laws of a child. Thus I pick out from some specimens given by O’Shea, p. 135 f. (girl, 2.9), the following words: pell (smell), teeze (sneeze), poke (smoke), tow (snow), and formulate the rule: s + a nasal became the voiceless stop corresponding to the nasal, a kind of assimilation, in which the place of articulation and the mouth-closure of the nasals were preserved, and the sound was made unvoiced and non-nasal as the s. In other combinations m and n were intact.

      Some further faults are illustrated in Tony E.’s [tʃouz, pʌg, pus, tæm, pʌm, bæk, pi·z, nouʒ, ɔk, es, u·] for clothes, plug, push, tram, plum, black, please, nose, clock, yes, you.

      V.—§ 4. Groups of Sounds.

      Even when a sound by itself can be pronounced, the child often finds it hard to pronounce it when it forms part of a group of sounds. S is often dropped before another consonant, as in ‘tummy’ for ‘stomach.’ Other examples have already been given above. Hilary M. (2.0) had difficulty with lp and said [hæpl] for ‘help.’ She also said [ointən] for ‘ointment’; C. M. L. (2.3) said ‘sikkums’ for ‘sixpence.’ Tony E. (2.0) turns grannie into [nægi]. When initial consonant groups are simplified, it is generally, though not always, the stop that remains: b instead of bl-, br-, k instead of kr-, sk-, skr-, p instead of pl-, pr-, spr-, etc. For the groups occurring medially and finally no general rule seems possible.

      V.—§ 5. Mutilations and Reduplications.

      To begin with, the child is unable to master long sequences of syllables; he prefers monosyllables and often emits them singly and separated by pauses. Even in words that to us are inseparable wholes some children will make breaks between syllables, e.g. Shef-field, Ing-land. But more often they will give only part of the word, generally the last syllable or syllables; hence we get pet-names like Bet or Beth for Elizabeth and forms like ‘tatoes’ for potatoes, ‘chine’ for machine, ‘tina’ for concertina, ‘tash’ for moustache, etc. Hilary M. (1.10) called an express-cart a press-cart, bananas and pyjamas nanas and jamas.

      It is not, however, the production of long sequences of syllables in itself that is difficult to the child, for in its meaningless babbling it may begin very early to pronounce long strings of sounds without any break; but the difficulty is to remember what sounds have to be put together to bring about exactly this or that word. We grown-up people may experience just the same sort of difficulty if after hearing once the long name of a Bulgarian minister or a Sanskrit book we are required to repeat it at once. Hence we should not wonder at such pronunciations as [pekəlout] for petticoat or [efelənt] for elephant (Beth M., 2.6); Hilary M. called a caterpillar a pillarcat. Other transpositions are serreval for several and ocken for uncle; cf. also wops for wasp.

      To explain the frequent reduplications found in children’s language it is not necessary, as some learned authors have done, to refer to the great number of reduplicated words in the languages of primitive tribes and to see in the same phenomenon in our own children an atavistic return to primitive conditions, on the Häckelian assumption that the development of each individual has to pass rapidly through the same (‘phylogenetic’) stages as the whole lineage of his ancestors. It is simpler and more natural to refer these reduplications to the pleasure always felt in repeating the same muscular action until one is tired. The child will repeat over and over again the same movements of legs and arms, and we do the same when we wave our hand or a handkerchief or when we nod our head several times to signify assent, etc. When we laugh we repeat the same syllable consisting of h and a more or less indistinct vowel, and when we sing a melody without words we are apt to ‘reduplicate’ indefinitely. Thus also with the little ones. Apart from such words as papa and mamma, to which we shall have to revert in another chapter (VIII, § 8), children will often form words from those of their elders by repeating one syllable; cf. puff-puff, gee-gee. Tracy (p. 132) records pepe for ‘pencil,’ kaka for ‘Carrie.’ For a few weeks (1.11) Hilary M. reduplicated whole words, e.g. king-king, ring-ring (i.e. bell), water-water. Tony F. (1.10) uses [touto] for his own name. Hence pet-names like Dodo; they are extremely frequent in French—for instance, Fifine, Lolotte, Lolo, Mimi; the name Daudet has arisen in a similar way from Claudet, a diminutive of Claude.

      It is a similar phenomenon (a kind of partial reduplication) when sounds at a distance affect one another, as when Hilary M. (2.0) said [gɔgi] for doggie, [bɔbin] for Dobbin, [dezmən di·n] for Jesmond Dene, [baikikl] for bicycle, [kekl] for kettle. Tracy (p. 133) mentions bopoo for ‘bottle,’ in which oo stands for the hollow sound of syllabic l. One correspondent mentions whoofing-cough for ‘whooping-cough’ (where the final sound has crept into the first word) and chicken-pops for ‘chicken-pox.’ Some children say ‘aneneme’ for anemone; and in S. L. (4.9) this caused a curious confusion during the recent war: “Mother, there must be two sorts of anenemies, flowers and Germans.”

      Dr. Henry Bradley once told me that his youngest child had a difficulty with the name Connie, which was made alternatingly [tɔni] and [kɔŋi], in both cases with two consonants articulated at the same point. Similar instances are mentioned in German books on children’s language, thus gigarr for ‘zigarre,’ baibift for ‘bleistift,’ autobobil (Meringer),[18] fotofafieren (Stern), ambam for ‘armband,’ dan for ‘dame,’ pap for ‘patte’ (Ronjat). I have given many Danish examples in my Danish book. Grammont’s child (see Mélanges linguistiques offerts à A. Meillet, 1902) carried through these changes in a most systematic way.

      V.—§ 6. Correction.

      The time comes when the child corrects his mistakes—where it said ‘tat’ it now says ‘cat.’ Here there are two possibilities which both seem to occur in actual life. One is that the child hears the correct sound some time before he is able to imitate it correctly; he will thus still say t for k, though he may in some way object to other people saying ‘tum’ for ‘come.’ Passy relates how a little French girl would say tosson both for garçon and cochon; but she protested when anybody else said “C’est un petit cochon” in speaking about a boy, or vice versa. Such a child, as soon as it can produce the new sound, puts it correctly into all the places where it is required. This, I take it, is the ordinary procedure. Frans (my own boy) could not pronounce h and said an, on for the Danish pronouns han, hun; but when he began to pronounce this sound, he never misplaced it (2.4).

      The other possibility is that the child learns how to pronounce the new sound at a time when its own acoustic impression is not yet quite settled; in that case there will be a period during which his use of the new sound is uncertain and fluctuating. When parents are in too great a hurry to get a child out of some false pronunciation, they may succeed in giving

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