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This scholarly work represents a very solid contribution to our knowledge of the development of speech in the infant. The author is both a paedogogue and a phonetician. He reviews the previous literature intensively, though not comprehensively, and adds a close study day to day of
his own of the earliest signs of speech in a particular infant. Not content, as many writers have been, with noting only formed speech he has investigated very carefully the inchoate precursors of this. He presents a very technical phonetic study of the earliest sounds, classifying them into 'comfort-sounds' and 'discomfort cries'. The former differ from the latter in quality, are more limited in type and are usually nasalized. That the back consonants, such as k, g, r, should be comfort sounds he explains on physiological grounds.
In an interesting study of babbling the author finds two main motives at work. One, developing Freud's idea of repetition-compulsion, he considers to be the need to obtain mastery. The other—perhaps related to it—is the æsthetic pleasure in rhythm and pattern.
The author's aim was to co-ordinate the detailed observations of the beginning of speech with the infant's behaviour at each stage. In this, however, his success is very limited. He has been greatly hampered by his knowledge of psychology being limited to that of the academic variety and gives little hint of familiarity with modern dynamic psychology, particularly of child analysis.
There is, unfortunately, no mention of any of the psycho-analytical contributions to the study of language.