Other children of the same age do very much the same. The boy D, though
he repeated cleverly what was said, was not good at naming objects when
he was expected to do this of himself. He would say, e. g., _pilla_ for
Spiegel (mirror). At this same period (twenty-five months) he could not
yet give the softened or liquid sound of consonants (mouilliren). He
said _n_ and _i_ and _a_ very plainly, and also _i-a_, but not _nja_,
and not once "ja"; but, on the contrary, always turned away angrily when
his father or I, or others, required it of him. But as late as the
twenty-eighth month echolalia was present in the highest degree in this
very vigorous and intelligent child, for he would at times repeat
mechanically the last word of every sentence spoken in his hearing, and
even a single word, e. g., when some one asked "Warum?" (why) he
likewise said _warum_ without answering the question, and he continued
to do it for days again and again in a vacant way, with and without the
tone of interrogation (which he did not understand). From this we see
again plainly that the imitation of sounds is independent of the
understanding of them, but is dependent on the functions of
articulation.
These functions are discussed by themselves in the work of Prof. Fritz
Schultze, of Dresden, "Die Sprache des Kindes" ("The Language of the
Child," Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the
"principle of the least effort.
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