Not that she was silent. The house was full of her cheerful sounds, the musical ba-bas and ah-ah-ahs of a normal baby. Lying in bed in the leisurely mornings the summer she was two, I listened to her pronounce her name. ‘El-ly,’ she said, ‘El-ly’ – Iaughing, chuckling, over and over again. The sounds, even the consonants, were exquisitely clear. I’m glad I got the chance to hear her. For a month or so she said it. Then she ceased completely. It was two years at least until she spoke her name again. When she did, it was so indistinct as to be virtually unintelligible. Even today she does not say it as clearly as she did those summer mornings six years ago.
There was another peculiarity of her language that went far beyond its sparseness. Elly spoke words, though not often. But she did not use them to communicate. She had no idea of language as a tool that could cause things to happen. By the time she was two and a half, there were several more words to add to the record. A few were simple nouns like ‘book’, ‘pin’, and ‘milk’. Others were sounds referring to activities, like the ‘there she is!’ intonation with which she responded to the peekaboo game in which I had finally succeeded in interesting her. But not one of these words was ever used, as distinguished from merely spoken. If Elly saw me, she might or might not say ‘mama’. She would never use the name to call me. She might possibly say ‘teddy’ if he appeared. She would never ask for him by name.
This was of course related to the fact that there was so little she wanted to ask for. If it’s all one to you whether mama comes or not, you aren’t likely to call her. If you don’t want teddy enough to reach for him with your own hand, you will hardly ask for him with a word. But even when she did begin to acknowledge desires — she was reaching two and a half — she did not communicate them by speech. She had other methods. If the object was near, she would take your hand and use it as a tool. If it was more remote, she would push or lead you to it. There were some foods she liked better than others, but she was no more likely to learn the words for them than for objects that had no interest for her. In fact, though food was one of the few things she might want, she had no word for any food but milk, which she had no particular desire for. Language, for Elly, was so nonfunctional that I often felt that what was inexplicable was not why she didn’t have more words but why she had as many as she did.
For where could these words have come from? If you said words, she did not appear to hear them. She never repeated any sound after you said it — the easiest way of acquiring new words. If you said one of her own words to her, she did not understand it. Yet if she had not at some time heard it with understanding, she would not have acquired it at all. Each of Elly’s words started in the public domain. Yet it was as if as soon as she acquired it, it became her own and nobody else’s.
Words are channels of communication, but Elly’s words were things-in-themselves that led to nowhere and nobody.
So there she was. Two, two and a half, three. Every couple of months she’d say a word she’d never said before. By the time she was three my list was up to twenty. But of those twenty in the entire month before her third birthday she spoke only five. Most of them were out of use for months at a time and several, like the clear and frequent ‘Elly’, had been abandoned altogether.
Where did they go? Some simply disappeared. Elly learned ‘milk’ and ‘pin’ at two and lost them by two and a half. She was five before she said them again and when she did they seemed entirely fresh acquisitions. Some seemed rather to go underground. ‘Ball’ had a strange and suggestive history. Acquired around two, the word went into almost immediate retirement. It emerged once, six months later. Two months after that she said it three times in a single week. Another six months and she said it again. It was never triggered by our familiar household balls. Elly said it once when she saw a small, entirely deflated white rubber football — an object it took real perspicuity for a two-year-old to identify as a ball at all. (Ten minutes later shown an ordinary ball, she said nothing. ) She said it once when I tossed a perforated plastic golf-ball into her bath. The word existed deep inside, apparently. But only an unusual stimulus could call it out.
Other children’s vocabularies build and proliferate, like their bodily skills. They add one word to another, then begin to combine them. Elly did not. For years every expansion of her vocabulary was matched by a contraction. Most often the old word would simply be gone. But sometimes it was possible actually to observe the process. I was present when Elly acquired the word ‘eye’, and I watched it degenerate and disappear.
She was three when she acquired it. Although bodily sensations were her main avenue to the world, it was her only word for a part of the body. (She was over four before she acquired another.) She learned it in what were for her unusual circumstances — not from me but from a friend, and not from a real eye, but from a large and striking stylized eye on a bathing cap. She repeated it next day in a new and correct context and kept it current for some time, saying it for approval several times a day. (By three she had progressed enough to be able to enjoy approval.) I tried to keep meaning in the word by showing eyes on dolls, pictures, and people, and Elly enjoyed this. She had an ‘eye’ game; she would take off my glasses, say ‘eye’, and laugh. I could even ask ‘Where’s doggy’s eye?’ and get an answer, though previously all ‘where’ questions had been answered like ‘Where’s your belly button?’ — by a delighted revelation of that intrinsically comic spot. But repetition has its dangers, as I had already seen in Elly’s block play. Within a month the word was already losing meaning; it was becoming an approval-winning trick. Two months later it was entirely out of use and Elly showed no signs of comprehending it when spoken.
At three years and ten months, a year after Dr Blank had first seen her, I reported to him, ‘words still come and go; no real change from a year ago. About 5–6 in use in any one week.’ For her fourth birthday I made a complete vocabulary review, checking over my records of every word I had ever heard her speak, the date of its acquisition, and the frequency of its use. The total was 31. This is the summary I made then.
Of the 31 words she has used in context in her four years of life it would not cause me surprise if she today spoke any one of 12 or 13. Others would be cause for a special entry here. Among these would be #27,28, and 29 in order of acquisition, so recent use does not save from oblivion.
In her own speech, then, Elly, in four years, had made hardly any progress. The vocabulary pool she drew from was larger, but she used no more words, no more often, than she had a year before. About comprehension, however, we could be a little more cheerful. Elly regularly said words and abandoned them, but once she began to understand something we said to her she tended to hold on to it. There was a slow but steady increase in what she understood and would respond to. At two she would turn when we said ‘Elly’ and crawl when we said ‘come’. By two and a quarter she seemed to know the meaning of ‘Let’s walk-walk up’ — or ‘down’. At two and a half she responded correctly to ‘give me the [pins/book/brush]’. But in all these cases it seemed likely that, while appearing to respond to words, she was in fact responding to something else — to the nonverbal cues afforded by the situation. When I said ‘come’ I held out my arms. My hand outstretched accompanied ‘give me’. It was not until she was three years and two months old that I could record in my notebook: ‘Response to “come”, “let’s go walk- walk, ‘climb up in your chair” now perfectly sure even if I am out of sight while speaking (i.e. it is not a situational cue).’ By the time six more months had passed I could add ‘Shut the door,’ ‘Come get your diapers,’ ‘Let’s go outside,’ and ‘Let’s go riding in the car.’ The expansion continued; two months later I could report to Dr Blank that