the mechanism of speech, both on its physiological and psychological
aspects; but this _schema_ we have not sufficient space to reproduce.

Although the formation of ideas is not at first, or even for a
considerable time, dependent on speech (any more than it is in the case
of the lower animals), it constitutes the condition to the learning of
speech, and afterward speech reacts upon the development of ideation. A
child may and usually does imitate the sounds of animals as names of the
animals which make them long before it can speak one word, and, so far
as Preyer's evidence goes, interjections are all originally imitative
of sounds. Children with a still very small vocabulary use words
metaphorically, as "tooth-heaven" to signify the upper gums, and it is
a mistake to suppose that the first words in a child's vocabulary are
invariably noun-substantives, as distinguished from adjectives or even
verbs. As this statement is at variance with almost universal opinion,
we think it is desirable to furnish the following corroboration. The
present writer has notes of a child which possessed a vocabulary of
only a dozen words or so. The only properly English words were "poor,"
"dirty," and "cook," and of these the two adjectives, no less than the
noun-substantive, were always appropriately used. The remaining words
were nursery words, and of these "ta-ta" was used as a verb meaning to
go, to go out, to go away, etc., inclusive of all possible moods and
tenses. Thus, for instance, on one occasion, when the child was wheeling
about her doll in her own perambulator, the writer stole away the doll
without her perceiving the theft. When she thought that the doll had had
a sufficiently long ride, she walked round the perambulator to take
it out. Not finding the doll where she had left it she was greatly
perplexed, and then began to say many times "poor Na-na, poor Na-na,"
"Na-na ta-ta, Na-na ta-ta;" this clearly meant--poor Na-na has
disappeared. And many other examples might be given of this child