In certain of these original formations we may detect a fine feeling for
verbal analogy. Thus a French boy, after killing the ‘limaces’ (snails)
which were eating the plants in the garden, dignified his office by
styling himself a ‘limarcier’; where the inventive faculty was no doubt
led by the analogy of ‘voiturier’ formed from ‘voiture’.[99]
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Footnote 99:
Compayré, _op. cit._, p. 249, where other examples are given.
-----
In other verbal formations it is difficult to determine the model which
is followed. Signorina Lombroso gives a good example. A little girl of
two and a half years had observed that when her mother allowed her to
take, eat, or drink something, she would say ‘prendilo’ (take it),
‘bevilo’ (drink it), or ‘mangialo’ (eat it). She proceeded to make a
kind of adjective or substantive out of each of these, asking ‘é
prendilo?’ ‘é bevilo?’ ‘é mangialo?’ _i.e._, ‘Is it takable or a case of
taking?’ etc., when she wanted to take, drink, or eat something.[100] By
such skilful artifices does the little word-builder find his way to the
names which he has need of.
-----
Footnote 100:
_Op. cit._, p. 12.
-----
In certain cases these original constructions are of a more clumsy order
and due to a partial forgetfulness of a word and an effort to complete
it. Thus a boy of four spoke of being ‘sorrified,’ where he was
evidently led out of the right track by the analogy of ‘horrified’. The
same little boy who talked of his ‘digs’ used the word ‘magnicious’ for
‘magnificent’. This is a choice example of word-transformation. No doubt
the child was led by the feeling for the sound of this termination in
other grand words, as ‘ambitious’. Possible, too, he might have heard
the form ‘magnesia’ and been influenced by a reminiscence of this
sound-complex. The talk of ‘Jeames’ with which Mr. Punch makes us
acquainted is full of just such delightful missings of the mark in
trying to reproduce big words.
_Sentence-building._
We may now follow the child in his later and more ambitious linguistic
efforts. The transition to this higher plane is marked by the use of the
completed form of thought, the sentence.
At first, as already pointed out, there is no sentence-structure. The
child begins to talk by using single words. These words consist of what
we call substantives, as ‘Mamma,’ ‘nurse,’ ‘milk,’ a few adjectives, as
‘hot,’ ‘nice,’ ‘good,’ a still smaller number of adverbial signs, as
‘ta-ta,’ or ‘away,’ ‘over,’ ‘down,’ ‘up,’ and one or two verb-forms,
apparently imperatives, as ‘go’. The exact order in which these appear,
and the proportion between the different classes of constituents at a
particular age, say two and a half or three, appear to vary greatly.
Words descriptive of actions, though very few at first, appear to grow
numerous in a later stage.[101]
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Footnote 101:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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