These alterations of articulate sound by the child remind one of the changes which the languages of communities undergo. We know, indeed, that these changes are due to imperfect imitation by succeeding generations of learners.[83] Hence we need not be surprised to find now and again analogies between these nursery transformations and those of words in the development of languages. In reproducing the sounds which he hears a child often illustrates a law of adult phonetic change. Thus changes within the same class of sounds, as the frequent alteration of ‘this’ into ‘dis,’ clearly correspond with those modifications recognised in Grimm’s Law. So, too, the common substitution of a dental for a guttural has its parallel in the changes of racial language.[84] Nobody again can note the transformation of _n_ into _m_ before _f_ in the form ‘hamfish’ for ‘handkerchief’ without thinking of the Greek change of συν into συμ before β, and like changes. Philologists may probably find many other parallels. One of them tells me that his little girl, on rendering _sh_ by the guttural _h_, reproduced a change in Spanish pronunciation. M. Egger compares a child’s rendering of ‘_tr_op’ (French) by ‘_cr_op’ with the transformation of the Latin ‘_tr_emere’ into ‘_cr_aindre’. ----- Footnote 83: See Sweet, _History of English Sounds_, p. 15. Footnote 84: See Sievers, _Phonetik_, p. 230. ----- I have assumed here that children’s defective reproduction of our verbal sounds is the result of inability to produce certain sounds and not due to the want of a discrimination of the sounds by the ear. This may seem strange in the light of Preyer’s statement that the earlier impulsive babbling includes most, if not all, of the sounds required later on for articulation. This may turn out to be an exaggeration, yet there is no doubt, I think, that certain sounds, including some as the initial _l_ which are common in the earlier babbling stage, are not produced at the beginning of the articulatory period. As the avoidance of these occurs in all children alike it seems reasonable to infer that they involve difficult muscular combinations in the articulatory organ. At the same time it seems going too far to say, as Schultze does, that the order of acquisition of sounds corresponds with the degree of difficulty. The very variability of this order in the case of different children shows that there is no such simple correspondence as this.[85] ----- Footnote 85: _Cf._ Pollock, _Mind_, vi., p. 436, and Preyer, _op. cit._, p. 434. -----