The most obvious thing about these first infantile renderings of the adult’s language is that they are a simplification. This applies to all words alike. Monosyllables if involving a complex mass of sound are usually reduced, as when ‘dance’ is shortened to ‘da’. This clearly illustrates the difficulty of certain sound-combinations, a point to be touched on presently. More striking is the habitual reduction of dissyllables and polysyllables. Here we note that the child concentrates his effort on the reproduction of a part only of the syllabic series, which part he may of course give but very imperfectly. The shortening tends to go to the length of reducing to a monosyllable. Thus ‘biscuit’ becomes ‘bik,’ ‘Constance’ ‘tun,’ ‘candle’ ‘ka,’ ‘bread and butter’ ‘bup’ or ‘bŭ’. Polysyllables, though occasionally cut down to monosyllables, as when ‘hippopotamus’ became ‘pots,’ are more frequently reduced to dissyllables, as when ‘periwinkle’ was shortened to ‘pinkle’. Handkerchief is a trying word for the English child, and for obvious reasons has to be learnt. It was reduced by the eldest child of a family to ‘hankish,’ by the two next to ‘hamfisch’ and by the last two to ‘hanky’. The little girl M. also reduced the last two syllables to ‘fish,’ making the sound ‘hanfish’. There seems to be no simple law governing these reductions of verbal masses. The accentuated syllable, by exciting most attention, is commonly the one reproduced, as when ‘nasturtium’ became ‘turtium’.[77] In the case of long words the position of a syllable at the beginning or at the end of the word seems to give an advantage in this competition of sounds, the former by impressing the sound as the first heard (compare the way in which we note and remember the initial sound of a name),[78] the latter by impressing it as the last heard, and therefore best retained. The unequal articulatory facility of the several sound-combinations making up the word may also have an influence on this unconscious selection. I think it not unlikely, too, that germs of a kind of æsthetic preference for certain sounds as new, striking or fine, may co-operate here.[79] ----- Footnote 77: In the reduction of ‘Constance’ to ‘tun’ the same thing is seen, for this child uniformly turned _k_’s into _t_’s. _Cf._ Preyer, _op. cit._, p. 397. Footnote 78: It has been pointed out to me by Dr. Postgate that the secondary stress on the first syllable of English words over four syllables (and some four-syllabled words) may assist in impressing the first syllable. Footnote 79: Recent psychological experiments show that similar influences are at work when a person attempts to repeat a long series of verbal sounds, say ten or twelve nonsense syllables. Initial or final position or accent may favour the reproduction of a member of such a series. -----