ABSTRACT
The child, learning to talk, is no more a mere repetition machine than he is a sovereign creator of speech; but his speech-development is only effected by the combined action of imitation and spontaneity. The child can only become familiar with this mother-tongue, at first so strange to his ears, by continually hearing it, and only make it his own by repeating its sounds; thus imitation is, in truth, the factor which, all others, makes it possible to learn to speak. The child's spontaneity, so far as it takes part in speech-development, is not in absolute opposition to imitation, but it penetrates even this and uses what imitation offers as material for further independent forms of speech. The principle of unconscious selection in imitation has, however, quite another field of activity. For the child's choice does not only extend to speech-material as such, but also to the persons whose speech is imitated.
