ABSTRACT
Children’s speech has now been closely studied for over fifty years by many skilled and learned observers, and much material has been collected. Its relevance to a study of the origins of language is a matter on which few have ventured to express an opinion. It is obvious that some aspects of the speech of infants have no significance for our present enquiry. We can be confident that the meanings of children’s earliest words are not the meanings of the earliest words of man. In the overwhelming majority of cases the ‘words’ begin with a consonant, and only in about 10% with a vowel. In the vast majority of cases they end in a vowel. The great difficulty experienced by children in their second year, in changing the set of the vocal organs and pronouncing a word of two different consonants, is best shown by their failure even to reproduce such words when they continually hear them.
