For lists of vocabularies and an analysis of their composition see Preyer, _op. cit._ (4th ed.), p. 372 ff.; Tracy, _Psychology of Childhood_, p. 76 ff. ----- In speaking of these words as substantives, adjectives, and so forth, I am merely adopting a convenient mode of description. We must not suppose that the words as used in this simple disjointed talk have their full grammatical value. It is not generally recognised that the single-worded utterance of the child is an abbreviated sentence or ‘sentence-word’ analogous to the sentence-words found in the simplest known stage of adult language. As with the race so with the child, the sentence precedes the word. Moreover, each of the child’s so-called words in his single-worded talk stands for a considerable variety of sentence-forms. Thus the words in the child’s vocabulary which we call substantives do duty for verbs and so forth. As Preyer remarks, ‘chair’ (stuhl) means ‘There is no chair,’ ‘I want to be put in the chair,’ ‘The chair is broken,’ and so forth. In like manner ‘dow’ (down) may mean ‘The spoon has fallen down,’ ‘I am down,’ ‘I want to go down,’ etc.[102] The particular shade of meaning intended is indicated by intonation and gesture. ----- Footnote 102: See Preyer, _op. cit._, p. 361; Romanes, _op. cit._, p. 296 ff. ----- This sentence-construction begins with a certain timidity. The age at which it is first observed varies greatly. It seems in most cases to be somewhere about the twenty-first month, yet I find good observers among my correspondents giving as dates eighteen and a half and nineteen months; and a friend of mine, a Professor of Literature, tells me that his boy formed simple sentences as early as fifteen months. We commonly have at first quite short sentences formed by two words in apposition. These may consist of what we should call an adjective added to and qualifying a substantive, as in the simple utterance of the child C., ‘Big bir’ (bird), or the exclamation, ‘Papa no’ (Papa’s nose); or they may arise by a combination of substantives, as in the sentence given by Tracy, ‘Papa cacker,’ _i.e._, ‘Papa has crackers,’ and one quoted by Preyer, ‘Auntie cake’ (German, ‘Danna Kuha,’ _i.e._, ‘Tante Kuche’) for ‘Auntie has given me cake’; and in a somewhat different example of a compound sentence also given by Preyer, ‘Home milk’ (German, ‘Haim Mimi’), interpreted as ‘I want to go home and have milk’. In the case of one child about the age of twenty-three months most of the sentences were composed of two words, one of which was a verb in the imperative. The love of commanding, so strong in the child, makes the use of the imperative, as is seen in this case, very common. M.’s first performance in sentence-building (at eighteen and a half months) was, ‘Mamma, tie,’ _i.e._, ‘tie gloves’.