The imitation of others' articulate sounds begins very early, and long before the sign-making impulse appropriates them as true words. The impulse to imitate others' movements seems first to come into play about the end of the fourth month, and traces of imitative movements of the mouth in articulation are said to have been observed in certain cases about this time. But it is only in the second half year that the imitation of sounds becomes clearly marked. At first this imitation is rather of tone, rise and fall of voice, apportioning of stress or accent, than of articulate quality; but gradually the imitation takes on a more definite and complete character.[1]
Toward the end of the year in favorable cases true linguistic imitation commences—that is to say, word-sounds gathered from others are used as such. Thus a boy of ten months would correctly name his mother "mamma," his aunt "addie" (aunty), and a person called Maggie "Aggie."[2] This imitative reproduction of others' words synchronizes roughly at least with the first onomatopoetic imitation of natural sounds.
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. To begin with, a child is at first incapable of reproducing the complex sound structures which we call a word. He tends to cut it down. At the start, indeed, it seems almost a general rule that the word is reduced to a monosyllabic form. Thus biscuit becomes "bik," candles "ka," bread and butter "bup" or "bu," and so forth.
The formidable word periwinkle was shortened to "pinkie," and the no less difficult handkerchief was reduced by the eldest child of a family to "hancisch," by the next two to "hamfisch," and by the last two to "hanky."
There seems to be no simple law governing these reductions of verbal masses. The accentuated syllable, by calling for most attention, is commonly the one reproduced, as when nasturtium became "turtium." The initial and final sounds seem to have an advantage in this competition of sounds, the former as being the first (compare the way in Which we note and remember the initial sound of a name), the latter as the last heard and therefore best retained. The lingual facility of the several sound-combinations, and the consequent interest of a quasi-sesthetic kind in
