IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIND AND LANGUAGE

endeavour to speak—even when they are not addressing the child—deliberately and clearly. All authorities are agreed upon the mischievous effect of what is called “baby talk,” the use of an extensive sham vocabulary, a sort of deciduous milk vocabulary that will presently have to be shed again. Froebel and Preyer join hands on this. The child’s funny little perversions of speech are really genuine attempts to say the right word, and we simply cause trouble and hamper development if we give back to the seeking mind its own blunders again. When a child wants to indicate milk, it wants to say milk, and not “mooka” or “mik,” and when it wants to indicate bed, the needed word is not “bedder” or “bye-bye,” but “bed.” But we give the little thing no chance to get on in this way until suddenly one day we discover it is “time the child spoke plainly.” Preyer has pointed out very instructively the way in which the quite sufficiently difficult matter of the use of I, mine, me, my, you, yours, and your is made still more difficult by those about the child adopting irregularly the experimental idioms it produces. When a child says to its mother, “Me go mome,” it is doing its best to speak English, and its remark should be received without worrying comment; but when a mother says to her child, “Me go mome,” she