The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    its life. But in healthy children it passes away as the child, by efforts of attention and intelligent practice, gradually masters its difficulties of articulation. Lalling is, I think, much the best term for these imperfect performances of the Oral Articulative' Mechanism; and when the above defects exist in combination, as they always do at a certain stage of baby-speech, the term is very specially appropriate. I also think it is justifiable to use it as a general term that may be applied even to cases where the above defects exist singly; and in this chapter I propose so to use it. In (rerinany, these defects of Oral Articulation have been treated of under the general term Stammering (Stammeln).1 I have already, in the first chapter, protested against the use of the English word Stammering in this sense. In this country, the word thus used would be altogether misapplied; since, when we speak of Stam- mering, we always think of an element of hesitancy in the Speech. In these Oral Articulative defects, however, there is not necessarily any hesitancy: the words may be emitted with apparent ease, although the syllabic articulation is so imperfectly performed. It should, at the same time, be remembered that in its first efforts to speak the utterances of the child are often emitted very deliberately, and with much apparent effort. It should be noted also, that true Stammering, with Stuttering, very frequently nppenrs, as a passing phenomenon, even in normal children. It is, further, most important to make note of the fact that in imbecile children this true Stammering or Stuttering, due to want of promptitude in the Vocal Mechanism, is often found associated with Lalling, due, as we have just seen, not to want of promptitude, but to want of precision in the performance of the Oral Articu- lative Mechanism. Lastly, the reader will remember that Words of its own Invention are employed, more or less, by almost every normal child, when true speech-production begins to be developed. In normal children, these words are, with the further growth of Speech-power, soon disused and forgotten. We shall find that in imbeciles similar words are often invented, but that, in them, they 1 In Germany, the term tailing (lallen) is apparently applied to the imperfect utterances of baby-speech only when these are so inarticulate as to be almost or altogether unintelligible; Lalling being described as an extreme development of Stammering (Stammeln). See article Stottern, by R. Arndt, in Eulenburg's Real Encyclopttlie, vol. xix., p. 173.