This study is based on a record of my daughter Joan's speech from her eleventh to her thirty-sixth month. It will deal chiefly with phonemic and lexical matters. For, apart from other reasons which will be discussed below, the morphological and syntactical development in the language of English-speaking children has been well described in numerous works, while only two authors have hitherto been concerned, implicitly or explicitly, with problems of phonemics in infant language, and as regards vocabulary patterns, it is impossible to glean any information from the customary alphabetical word lists.

Ever since the seventies of the last century scholars have given a great deal of attention to various kinds of evidence that has seemed to indicate a reduced grade alongside of the zero grade in the light bases. The early discussions concerned chiefly Osthoff's theory of the ‘nebentonige Tiefstufe’, but one should note also Chr. Bartolomae's attempt to establish the presence of ə in the e-series. While no one today would support either theory in its original form, some of the material collected by Osthoff and Bartholomae still has significance.

[The endings of the Gmc. weak preterite are from the IE second aorist. The WGmc. and NGmc. endings are original; -ed- is a specific Gothic development; the Alemannic ō and ī endings are Alemannic innovations; likewise the OHG 2d sg. in ō. ‘Irregular’ forms of the dental preterite formant are analogical forms from the preterite participle.]

The equational or nominal type of sentence, defined here simply as one without a verb or copula, is a common feature of Hungarian syntax. According to grammars, chiefly pedagogical, and even some scientific ones, the copulas van and vannak are omitted in certain cases and are regularly used in certain others. Descriptively, of course, such a negative statement of the rule is quite satisfactory; but for reasons to be justified below, the following formulation, more exhaustive than usual in grammars and positive in approach, will be adopted.