t
been observed. Here belongs the _rollu_, _rollolo_, uttered by my boy,
of his own accord, on seeing rolling balls or wheels; and (in the
twentieth month) _rodi_, _otto_, _rojo_, where the rotation perceived by
the child occasions at once the one or the other exclamation containing
_l_ or _r_. In the case of Steinthal, it was _lu-lulu_; in the case of a
boy a year and a half old, observed by Kussmaul, it was _golloh_. In
these cases the first interjection is always occasioned by a _noise_,
not simply by the sight of things rolling without noise. The
interjection must accordingly be styled imitative. A combination of the
original--i. e., inborn--interjectional sounds into syllables and groups
of syllables, without the assistance of members of the family, and
without imitation, for the purpose of communicating an idea, is not
proved to exist.

On the whole, the way in which the child learns to speak not merely
resembles the way in which he learns at a later period to write, but is
essentially completely in accord with it. Here, too, he makes no new
inventions. First are drawn strokes and blurs without meaning; then
certain strokes are imitated; then signs of sounds. These can not be at
once combined into syllables, and even after the combination has been
achieved and the written word can be made from the syllables it is not
yet understood. Yet the child could see, even before the first
instruction in writing or the first attempt at scribbling, every
individual letter in the dimensions in which he writes it later. So,
too, the speechless child hears every sound before he understands
syllables and words, and he understands them before he can speak them.
The child commonly learns reading before writing, and so understands the
sign he is to write before he can write it. Yet the sign written by
himself is often just as unintelligible to him as the word he himself
speaks. The analogy is perfect.

If the first germs of words, after ideas have begun to become clear by
means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions
them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but
in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category
belongs the comparative _hocher_ for _hoeher_ in the sentence _hocher
bauen_ (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request when
playing with building-stones). The understanding of the comparative is
plainly manifest in this. When, therefore, t