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In his preface to the 1st edition of this book, published in 1936, Dr. Lewis says 'one must have faith in the continuity of growth'. He has done more in this book than ask us to have faith; he has provided evidence. Slightly less than one-third of the book is devoted to the appendices, containing tabulated data based on the observations of a number of workers, including the author's own observations of a boy K. Some of the appendices and two further chapters have been added to this new edition of the book. Dr. Lewis has organized his own observations and conclusions together with those of such scientific observers as Darwin, Bühler, Preyer, Deville, Ament, Guillame, Hoyer, Valentine, and Stern.
This book is devoted to discussion, fully documented from observations, of such phases as early utterance, early response to speech, babbling, imitation, the beginning of comprehension of conventional speech, the beginning of meaningful use of conventional speech, mastery of conventional forms, and the beginning and early functions of questions. While each chapter makes its conscientious offerings of observations and explanations, the illustrative material in this review is drawn mainly from the first half of the book, relating to the earliest phases in speech development. Dr. Lewis has illustrated richly the fluid and continuous development of speech from the earliest infant cries to the fully-fledged adult word conversation. The student of human behaviour who is tempted to wander into the 'controversial area' will perhaps be inclined to abandon the term 'preverbal period', after studying and speculating about the observations recorded in this book.
The author sets out to solve two problems. (1) The manner in which speech begins in children, and (2) How those characteristics of speech which we usually see flowering during the course of the child's second year are related to his earlier experience and behaviour. This detailed and valuable study will not disappoint read