form, that is, for the length of the sound-names and the number of principal sound-elements, together with the distribution of voice-stress or accent. Little heed is paid at first to the articulate quality of the sounds. Thus certain sounds, as the labials, are used as drudges and made to stand for a great diversity of sound. Sometimes a guttural sound, as k, is put to a like general vicarious service.
How much more important is the general form of the sound-name than the particular order of sounds is seen in the fact that after articulation has become differentiated and the several sounds are repeated with an approach to accuracy, the order is frequently altered. An early example of such transposition noted in the case of one child was the use of "hoogshur" for sugar.
One very interesting feature in these transformations is the strong tendency to reduplication. We notice the tendency to repeat sounds in the first "la-la" stage of articulation, and a like tendency shows itself in the later linguistic stage. Monosyllables are frequently doubled, as in the familiar "gee-gee," "ba-ba," "ni-ni" (nice thing). 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 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.
These early reduplications, which, as is well known, have their parallel in many of the names of the languages of savage tribes.[1] are sometimes said to be the result of a kind of physiological inertia, the tendency to go on doing what has been begun. But it is probable that the repetition of a sound gives pleasure to the child as a form of sound-harmony or assonance. This supposition is borne out by the fact that the child, in repeating the words uttered by others, frequently assimilates two sounds. Thus he will sometimes alter the first of two sounds so as to assimilate it to the second. In one case thick was pronounced as "kik," and the name Anna received an initial consonant so as to become the reduplication "Na-na." In some cases assonance is secured by altering the final sound. "If" (writes a mother) "a word began with a labial, he generally concluded it with a labial, making bird, for example, 'bom.' In certain instances even the vowel sounds will be modified so as to produce a kind of assonance, as when 'bonnie Dundee' was rendered by 'bun dun.'"
- ↑ See Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 198.
