Coming to words which we call names we find that the child will often
extend a recognition-sign from one object to a second, and to our
thinking widely dissimilar object through the discovery of some analogy.
Such extension, moving rather along poetic lines than those of our
logical classifications, is apt, as we have seen, to wear a quaint
metaphorical aspect. A star, for example, looked at, I suppose, as a
small bright spot, was called by one child an eye. The child M. called
the opal globe of a lighted lamp a ‘moon’. ‘Pin’ was extended by another
child to a crumb just picked up, a fly, and a caterpillar, and seemed to
mean something little to be taken between the fingers. The same child
used the sound ‘’at’ (hat) for anything put on the head, including a
hair-brush. Another child used the word ‘key’ for other bright metal
things, as money. Romanes’ child extended the word ‘star,’ the first
vocable learned after ‘Mamma’ and ‘Papa,’ to bright objects generally,
candles, gas-flames, etc. Taine speaks of a child of one year who after
first applying the word “fafer” (from “chemin de fer”) to railway
engines went on to transfer it to a steaming coffee-pot and everything
that hissed or smoked or made a noise. In these last illustrations we
have plainly a rudimentary process of classification. Any point of
likeness, provided it is of sufficient interest to strike the attention,
may thus serve as a basis of childish classification.
As with names of things so with those of actions. The crackling noise of
the fire was called by one child ‘barking,’ and the barking of a dog was
named by another ‘coughing’. We see from this that the particular line
of analogical extension followed by a child will depend on the nature of
the first impressions or experiences which serve as his starting point.
A like originality is apt to show itself in the first crude attempt to
seize and name the relations of things. The child C. called dipping
bread in gravy ‘ba’ (bath). Another child extended the word ‘door’ to
“everything that stopped up an opening or prevented an exit, including
the cork of a bottle, and the little table that fastened him in his high
chair”.
In these extensions we see the tendency of child-thought towards
‘concretism,’ or the use of a simple concrete idea in order to express a
more abstract idea. Children frequently express the contrast big,
little, by the pretty figurative language ‘Mamma’ and ‘baby’. Thus a
small coin was called by an American child a ‘baby dollar’. Romanes’
daughter, named Ilda, pointed out the sheep in a picture as ‘Mamma-ba’
and the lambs as ‘Ilda-ba’. It is somewhat the same process when the
child extends an idea obtained from the most impressive experience of
childish difficulty, _viz._, ‘too big,’ so as to make it do duty for the
abstract notion ‘too difficult’ in general.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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