"mother" in various districts of Germany, whereas these and very similar expressions signify also the mother's breast, milk, pap, drink, nursing-bottle; nay, even in some languages the father is designated by _Ma_-sounds, the mother by _Ba_-and _Pa_-sounds. It is very much the same with other primitive syllables of the babe's utterance, e. g., _atta_. Where this does not denote the parents or grandparents it is frequently used (_tata_, _tatta_, _tata_, also in England and Germany) in the sense of "gone" ("fort") and "goodby." These primitive syllables, _pa-pa_, _ma-ma_, _tata_ and _apa_, _ama_, _ata_, originate of themselves when in the expiration of breath the passage is stopped either by the lips (_p_, _m_) or by the tongue (_d_, _t_); but after they have been already uttered many times with ease, without meaning, at random, the mothers of all nations make use of them to designate previously existing ideas of the child, and designate by them what is most familiar. Hence occurs the apparent confounding of "milk" and "breast" and "mother" and "(wet-) nurse" or "nurse" and "bottle," all of which the child learns to call _mam_, _amma_, etc. But just at this period appears a genuine echolalia, the child, unobserved, repeating correctly and like a machine, often in a whisper, all sorts of syllables, when he hears them at the end of a sentence. The normal child, before he can speak, repeats sounds, syllables, words, if they are short, "mechanically," without understanding, as he imitates movements of the hands and the head that are made in his sight. Speaking is a movement-making that invites imitation the more because it can be strictly regulated by means of the ear. Anything more than regulation is not at first given by the sense of hearing, for those born deaf also learn to speak. They can even, like normal children, speak quite early in dreams (according to Gerard van Asch). Those born deaf, as well as normal children, when one turns quietly toward them, often observe attentively the lips (and also touch them sometimes) and the tongue of the person speaking; and this visual image, even without an auditory image, provokes imitation, which is made perfect by the combination of the two. This combination is lacking in the child born blind, pure echolalia prevailing in this case; in the one born deaf, the combination is likewise wanting, the reading-off of the syllables from the mouth coming in as a substitute. With the deaf infant the study of the mouth-movements is, as is well known, the only means of understanding words spoken aloud, and it is sight that serves almost exclusively for this, very rarely touch; and the child born deaf often repeats the visible movements of lips and tongue better than the hearing child that can not yet talk. It is to be observed, in general, that the hearing child makes less use, on the whole, of the means of reading-off from the mouth than we assume, but depends chiefly on the ear.