ause they are the most trustworthy and the most
delicate means of expression for ideas. If ideas are not expressed at
all, or not intelligibly, their possessor can not use them, can not
correct or make them effective. Those ideas only are of value, as a
general thing, which continue to exist after being communicated to
others. Communication takes place with accuracy (among human beings)
only by means of words. It is therefore important to know how the
child learns to speak words, and then to use them.

I have above designated, as the chief difficulty for the child in the
formation of words, the establishment of a connection between the
central storehouse for sense-impressions--i. e., the sensory centers
of higher rank--with the intercentral path of connection between the
center-for-sounds and the speech-motorium. After the establishment of
these connections, and long after ideas have been formed, the
sound-image of the word spoken by the mother, when it emerges in the
center-for-sounds directly after the rise of a clear idea, is now
repeated by the child accurately, or, in case it offers insurmountable
difficulties of articulation for pronunciation, inaccurately. This
fact of _sound-imitation_ is fundamental. Beyond it we can not go.
Especially must be noted here as essential that it appears to be an
entirely indifferent matter what syllables and words are employed for
the first designation of the child's ideas. Were one disposed to
provide the child with false designations, he could easily do it. The
child would still connect them logically. If taught further on that
two times three are five, he would merely give the _name_ five to what
is six, and would soon adopt the usual form of expression. In making a
beginning of the association of ideas with articulate syllables, such
syllables are, as a rule, employed (probably in all languages) as have
already been often uttered by the child spontaneously without meaning,
because these offered no difficulties of articulation; but only the
child's family put meaning into them. Such syllables are _pa_, _ma_,
with their doubled form _papa_, _mama_, for "father" and "mother," in
connection with which it is to be observed that the meaning of them is
different in different languages and even in the dialects of a
language. For _maman_, _mama_, _mama_, _mamme_, _mammeli_, _moemme_,
_mam_, _mamma_, _mammeken_, _memme_, _memmeken_, _mamm[)e]l[)e]_,
_mammi_, are at the same time child-wo