I

SPEECH AND THE LEARNING PROCESS1

WE have seen that the speaker's inner purpose, his thought plus his spirit, his deeper intention, can be dimmed or totally obscured by inadequacies in the use of language, voice, or bodily action. It has been asserted that students who do not speak well are at fault primarily in voice and action, that they have enough of a store of thoughts and desires-meanings— to serve immediate needs if they can use voice and body in a way to give them proper expression. For further understanding of this situation let us apply certain established tenets of psychology to this problem of how to learn and relearn speech.

I. THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH

Theories of Speech.—Assuming that few people speak ably and that fewer yet read interestingly, what is the best method of curing defects and improving proficience? The safest way of ascertaining the answer, it would seem, is first to find out how man learned to speak in the beginning, and then to come as near to following out this process as the fallen state of our linguistic shortcomings permits. The experience of the race will be the proper

1 This chapter belongs here logically as a necessary step in describing the "fundamentals of speech." However, some classes may as well postpone consideration of it until toward the end of the course. Or, better, the instructor can assign only such parts as suit the peculiar needs of his class.

beginning and the best guide. How, then, has the race learned to use its voice in intelligent, interesting, and even captivating discourse?

A Statement of Origin.-Judd1 gives this statement of the origin of speech:

Every sensory stimulation arouses some form of bodily activity. The muscles of the organs of circulation and the muscles of the limbs, as well as other internal and external muscles, are constantly engaged in making responses to external stimulations. Among the muscles of the body, which with the others are involved in expressive activities, are the muscles which control the organs of respiration. There can be no stimulation of any kind which does not affect more or less the character of the movements of inspiration and expiration. In making these general statements we find no necessity for distinguishing between the animals and man; so far as the general facts of relations between sensations and expression are concerned, they have like characteristics. That an air-breathing animal should produce sounds through irregularities in its respiratory movements when it is excited by external stimulus, especially if that stimulus is violent, is quite as natural as that its hair should rise when it is afraid or that its muscles should tremble when it is aroused to anger or to flight.

The important step in the development of language is the acquirement of the ability to use the movements of the vocal cords for purposes other than those of individual emotional expression. The acquirement of this ability is a matter of long evolution, and depends in its first stages upon social imitation. The importance of imitation in affecting the character of animal behavior appears as soon as animals begin to live in packs or herds or other social groups.

Speech Is Always Learned. Thus speech, depending for its origin upon "social imitation," does not rest upon an instinct; it is all learned. The acquisition of it then must follow the general rule for learning. This rule grows from the following sequence of events always found in the learning process. All activities start from random movements, movements having no definite aim or manifest purpose, uncontrolled and without direction.

1C. H. Judd, Psychology. Revised edition, 1917, pp. 211-212.

In the earliest stages of existence the child or animal is nothing but aimlessness. But soon some of the chance activities bring results that are greatly desired or needed, such as getting food, relieving pain or pressure, aiding in the circulation of the blood and the work of alimentation, relieving the lungs of bad air. Activities that get such results as these, no matter how random when first started, become quickly set, first, into volitional processes-that is, acts that the child or animal can do when it wants to and, secondly, into automatic habits which, whenever the stimulus is presented, bring a certain action more or less automatically. Under volitional action and habit-automatic action-all or most of the superfluous components of the original welter of random movements drop out and what is left is the movement or activity that gets the result desired. In this way it is that we learn to eat, pick up objects, turn over, sit up, walk-and speak.

Learning to Speak from Random Movements.-The tongue, the lips, the throat, the jaws, and the breathing apparatus are the seats of the random movements with which speech begins. Chance activities of these sets of muscles in a baby bring sounds; these sounds in time come to be accompaniments of successful activities when the organism is getting what it needs for its bodily satisfactions. Later the sound is by chance given alone and gets the desired result. Immediately the accompanying jerks and squirms and wriggles tend to drop out. In time the need, when it arises, produces at once the sound unaccompanied; then we can say that the child has learned to talk to those around it. Speech then becomes an act of will, of volition. Later when such volitional activity has been often enough repeated the whole series runs off, from the original stimulus to the action, with no excess motion, and at the very time that the child or animal is occupied with something

else. This type of action is automatic, the basis of habit; and habit is the goal of all teaching and learning. Animals and Speech Habits.-Apply this more directly. From the animal we can get the first beginnings; for animals speak after a fashion.1 Assume, then, animals eating in the woods; food newly found, every one keen and hungry. As the beasts eat, their enthusiasm and earnestness lead to all sorts of random, excess activity. Observe pigs at the trough and understand what is meant. Among these random movements will be some of the mouth, throat, and lungs that will produce soundsgrunts and snorts. Let these same sounds occur repeatedly in the presence of others while eating, and by association of this sound with the joyous success of munching something to eat, any animal who hears will habitually in time get himself set to find and partake of food, and any member of the group can thus deliberately call others to the repast. Thus is established a conventionalized means of communication. This is the beginning of speech.

Speech Uses Sounds Conventionalized.-Apply this process to all the complicated situations of life, and even the lower animals, whose needs are relatively simple, can develop and standardize that is, can conventionalize-a number of sounds that have definite and understandable meaning. With animals of a social nature, used to running in packs and depending upon one another for food and protection, these speech conventions increase in number. So that with man, whose needs and desires are almost countless and whose social disposition is the greatest of all, the number of sounds that are conventionalized into meaningful conveyers of messages becomes tremendously large.

From Aimlessness to Control.-From this we can see

1 The hen has ten or twelve significant sounds; the dog, five or six; the monkey, six.-Cited by Romanes, Mental Evolution of Man.

that the necessary factors in the process of learning to speak are: (1) random movement; then (2) a process of trial and error, with success in some of the trials; (3) repetition with more or less labored and useless effort involving imitation of models; (4) reduction of the useless part of the effort and increase of the chance of success; (5) success, without loss of effort or likelihood of mistake.

Imitation Especially Important.-Owing to the circumstance that speech is essentially a social activity, learned in the presence of others for the purpose of communicating with them, the factor of imitation becomes especially important in the process. Watson points out,1 speaking of the way babies learn to talk, that while "imitation plays a very minor rôle in the acquisition of manual habits . . . in the case of vocal acts there seems to be a difference. Imitation seems to be a process directly connected with the establishment of the act. The parents, of course, watch every new instinctive sound [random vocal activity] that approximates articulate speech, and they immediately speak the word that is nearest the child's vocal efforts (for example, 'ma,' 'pa,' ‘da'). The imitation here may be more apparent than real. That is, the parents by repeating the sound constantly offer a stimulus for that which the infant's vocal mechanisms are just set to utter. Whether the parents' words can set the mechanism is doubtful. Certainly imitation in the popular sense is the only way a new conventional word can be learned by the child until the elementary laws of word formation are learned through reading and instruction.”

How a Child Acquires Words. In the same passage Watson gives a hypothetical illustration of the formation of speech habits:

1 J. B. Watson, Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It, New York, 1919, pp. 318-319.