The Mind of the Child, Part II: The Development of the Intellect, International Education; Series Edited By William T. Harris, Volume IX.Preyer, William T.
Science
The Mind of the Child, Part II: The Development of the Intellect, International Education; Series Edited By William T. Harris, Volume IX.
Preyer, William T.
Child development; Child psychology
Through this manifold significance of a word, which is a substitute for
a whole sentence, is exhibited a much higher activity of the intellect
than appears in the mutilation and new formation of words having but one
meaning to designate a sense-impression, for, although in the latter is
manifested the union of impressions into perceptions and also of
qualities into concepts, wherein an unconscious judgment is involved,
yet a _clear_ judgment is not necessarily connected with them. The union
of concepts into conscious clear judgments is recognized rather in the
formation of a sentence, no matter whether this is expressed by one word
or by several words.
In connection with this an error must be corrected that is wide-spread.
It consists in the assumption that all children begin to speak with
nouns, and that these are followed by verbs. This is by no means the
case. The child daily observed by me used an adjective for the first
time in the twenty-third month in order to express a judgment, the
first one expressed in the language of those about him. He said "hot"
for "The milk is too hot." In general, the appropriation and employment
of words for the first formation of sentences depends, in the first
instance, upon the action of the adults in the company of the child. A
good example of this is furnished by an observation of Lindner, whose
daughter in her fourteenth month first begged with her hands for a piece
of apple, upon which the word "apple" was distinctly pronounced to her.
After she had eaten the apple she repeated the request, re-enforcing her
gesture this time by the imitated sound _appn_, and her request was
again granted. Evidently encouraged by her success, the child from that
time on used _appn_ for "eat, I want to eat," as a sign of her desire to
eat in general, because those about her "accepted this signification and
took the word stamped by her upon this concept for current coin, else it
would very likely have been lost." This also confirms my statement (p.
85) that a child easily learns to speak with logical correctness with
wrong words. He also speaks like the deaf-mute with logical correctness
with quite a different arrangement of words from that of his speech of a
later period. Thus the child just mentioned, in whom "the inclination to
form sentences was manifest from the twenty-second month," said, "hat
die Olga getrinkt," when she had drunk!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account