The Infancy of Speech and the Speech of Infancy
Jtsy Leopold Mem, m.d. Metnuen. zis.
This book is difficult to classify because our knowledge of the era with which it is concerned is so slight that deductions based upon the slender factual evidence are scarcely capable of proof or disproof. Recognizing this the author modestly describes it as a ” misadventure ” and ” a mixture of fact and fantasy It is in reality a scientific adventure into speculative realms?a profoundly interesting attempt to determine the probable origins of human speech and to describe the various paths and stages of its development.
Although the vast blanks in our knowledge of early man and of his prehuman ancestors are necessarily bridged by imaginative construction, this construction appears to be based on a careful collation of the evidence offered in the fields of anthropology, archaeology and philology interpreted in the light of the author’s own long and specialized study of speech and language. What renders it particularly interesting is that this ” scatter of facts ” is assembled and considered, perhaps for the first time, by one whose profession both as doctor and speech pathologist enables him to relate them anatomically, psychologically and linguistically. Dr Stein suggests that the speech, or rather the pre-speech utterance of the infant, mirrors in little the probable development of language in the infancy of the human race, and he places on both his own interpretation of the psychological and emotional urges which determine the growth of each and claims that the theories here set forward have received support from the fact that ” under their guidance it has been possible to re-integrate the speech of human beings inflicted with speech disorders
Not everybody will agree with his views but no one who is fascinated by the mystery of human speech and its development, can fail to be interested in the picture he builds up. The book is well indexed and includes some beautiful plates as well as text illustrations and diagrams. J.D.
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