th, at the
question "Where is mamma?" the child would turn toward her mother, and
in like manner toward the father at the question, "papa"?

A second child observed by Taine made utterances that had intellectual
significance in the seventh week, for the first time. Up to the age of
five months _ah_, _gue_, _gre_ (French) were heard; in the seventh
month, also _ata_, _ada_.

In his reflections, attached to these and a few other observations of
his own, Taine rightly emphasizes the great power of generalization and
the peculiarity the very young child had of associating with words it
had heard other notions than those common with us; but he ascribes too
much to the child's inventive genius. The child guesses more than it
discovers, and the very cases adduced (_hamm_, _tem_), on which he lays
great weight, may be traced, as I remarked above parenthetically, to
something heard by the child; this fact he seems to have himself quite
overlooked. It is true, that in the acquirement of speech _one_ word may
have several different meanings in succession, as is especially the case
with the word _bebe_ (corresponding to the English word _baby_), almost
universal with French children; it is not true that a child without
imitation of sounds invents a word with a fixed meaning, and that, with
no help or suggestion from members of the family, it employs its
imperfectly uttered syllables (Lallsylben) consistently for designating
its ideas.

Among the notes of Wyma concerning an English child ("The Mental
Development of the Infant of To-day," in the "Journal of Psychological
Medicine and Mental Pathology," vii, Part I, pp. 62-69, London, April,
1881), the following, relating to the acquisition of speech, are to be
mentioned:

At five months the child began to use a kind of language, consisting of
six words, to indicate a desire or intention. _Ning_ signified desire
for milk, and was employed for that up to the age of two years. (The
word may possibly have been derived from the word _milk_,[E] frequently
heard.) At nine months the child made use of the words _pretty things_
for animals; at ten months it formed many small sentences.

The child practiced itself in speaking, even without direct imitation of
words just spoken, for at the age of two years it began to say over a
number of nursery rhymes that nobody in the house knew, and that could
not have been learned from other children, because the child had no
intercourse with such.