It is perfectly true, as Professor Max Müller says, that “if an English child says ‘Up,’ that _up_ is, to his mind, noun, verb, and adjective, all in one.” Nevertheless, in a young child, from the very first, there is a marked tendency to observe the distinctions which belong to the principal parts of speech. The earliest words uttered by my own children have always been nouns and proper names, such as “Star,” “Mamma,” “Papa,” “Ilda,” &c.; and although, later on, some of these earliest words might assume the functions of adjectives by being used in apposition with other nouns subsequently acquired (such as “Mamma-ba,” for a sheep, and “Ilda-ba” for a lamb), neither the nouns nor the adjectives came to be used as verbs. It has been previously shown that the use of adjectives is acquired almost as soon as that of substantives; and although the poverty of the child’s vocabulary then often necessitates the adjectives being used as substantives, the substantives as adjectives, and both as rudimentary propositions, still there remains a distinction between them as object-words and quality-words. Similarly, although action-words and condition-words are often forced into the position of object-words and quality-words, it is apparent that the primary idea attaching to them is that which properly belongs to a verb. And, of course, the same remarks apply to relation-words, such as “Up.” Take, for instance, the cases of pre-conceptual predication which were previously quoted from Mr. Sully, namely, “Bow-wow” = “That is a dog;” “Ot” = “This milk is hot;” “Dow” = “My plaything is down;” “Dit ki” = “Sister is crying;” “Dit naughty” = “Sister is naughty;” “Dit dow ga” = “Sister is down on the grass.” In all these cases it is evident that the child is displaying a true perception of the different functions which severally belong to the different parts of speech; and so far as psychological analysis alone could carry us, there would be nothing to show that the forcing of one part of speech into the office of another, which so frequently occurs at this age, is due to anything more than the exigencies of expression where as yet there are scarcely any words for the conveyance of meaning of any kind. Therefore, on grounds of psychological analysis alone, I do not see that we are justified in arguing from these facts that a young child has no appreciation of the difference between the functions of the different parts of speech—any more than we should were we to argue that a grown man has no such appreciation when he extends the meaning of a substantive (such as “pocket”) so as to embrace the function of an adjective on the one hand (_e.g._ “pocket-book”), and of a verb on the other (_e.g._ “he _cannoned_ off the white, and _pocketed_ the red”). What may be termed this grammatical abuse of words becomes an absolute necessity where the vocabulary is small, as we well know when trying to express ourselves in a foreign language with which we are