The
reverse is the case. Further, _oe_ is said to present "enormous
difficulties," and hence has the place next to the last; but I have
often heard the _oe_, short and long, perfectly pure in the second month,
long before the _i_, and that not in my child alone. From the
observations upon the latter, the order of succession appears to be the
following: Indeterminate vowels, _u_, _ae_, _a_, _oe_, _o_, _ai_, _ao_,
_i_, _e_, _ue_, _oeu_ (French sound in coeur), _au_, _oi_. Thus, for
the above eight vowels, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, the order 3,
1, 2, 7, 4, 6, 5, 8, so that only _i_ and _ue_ keep their place. But
other children give a varying order, and these differences in the order
of succession of vowels as well as of consonants will certainly not be
referred to the "influence of heredity." Two factors of quite another
sort are, on the contrary, to be taken into account here in the case of
every normal child without exception, apart from the unavoidable errors
in every assigned order growing out of incomplete observation. In the
earliest period and when the babbling monologues begin, the cavity of
the mouth takes on an infinitely manifold variety of forms--the lips,
tongue, lower jaw, larynx, are moved, and in a greater variety of ways
than ever afterward. At the same time there is expiration, often loud
expiration, and thus originates entirely at random sometimes one sound,
sometimes another. The child _hears_ sounds and tones new to him, hears
his own voice, takes pleasure in it, and delights in making sounds, as
he does in moving his limbs in the bath.
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