Pulling out the stops

Tonight I was waiting in the car with Baby V and I decided to do a little experiment. I'm sure someday she will be really mad at me for all this, but until then I'll take my chances.

It was just a harmless little phonetics experiment. I decided to test the consonant sounds we use use in English, starting at the front of the mouth and moving back. So first I said, "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh." This is the voiced bilabial stop, made by pressing the lips together.

The perfect little mimic said, "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh."

I decided to continue with the stop consonants: "Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh."

V repeated, "Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh." (This is the voiced alveolar stop; the tip of the tongue presses against the alveolar ridge).

The same pattern continued for the velar stop, "Guh-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh."

I then went through all of the voiceless stops, which were successful, and also the nasals, "muh-muh-muh" and "nuh-nuh-nuh." So far, this was all a raging success; she repeated the sounds without any delay and, in fact, without even having to think about how to do it. The right sounds came out completely naturally.

Until I got to the labiodentals, that is. Her "fuh-fuh-fuh" came out sounding more like her "puh-puh-puh." The same was also true for "vuh-vuh-vuh"--her was more of a "buh-buh-buh."

When I said the "suh-suh-suh," sound, she said it as one continuous hiss: "Sssssssss." But when I said, "Zuh-zuh-zuh-zuh-zuh," she pretty much said it perfectly.

I know better than to test her liquids and glides at this point (the l, w, and y sounds). The same is true for her vowels. She does pretty wells with most vowels, but they are still kind of all over the place. For example, her beep still comes out more like bap. Maybe it's safe to say she has the lower vowels, but not the high vowels? I feel another test coming on!

Bear with me, poor little kid ...

Duck!

I am not kidding, the words are flying out of this kid's mouth! From the second she wakes up, until well after she goes down in her crib at night, it's all pointing and calling everything by name that she knows. "Lampa." "Ljus." "Cava" (that's our dog). "Mamma." "Star." "Baby." "Banana." "Cheese." "Bear." "Nose." "Diaper." "Egg." "Ball." "Book." "Cookie." "Toes." "Eyes." And then it starts all over again.

People who have studied language/linguistics have learned this from the start, but here I am seeing it in action, loud and clear, and right under my nose as my child learns to speak: there is an innate need for humans to communicate. It is as important to her as sleeping or eating. We are, after all, social creatures (yes, I know, some more than others, but that's a different story).

It's feeling more and more like V and I are having actual conversations. This could just mean that it's time for me to go back to work, when I start thinking that I am having conversation with a one-year-old (!), but no--give me some credit. She says these words that she knows, then she turns to me for comment or confirmation. It's incredible: at the age of one year, she is already picking up conversation patterns (what linguists call "turn taking"). It blows me away.

Here is something new as of yesterday: She has learned to say the second syllable of Cava's name. Just one day ago, she called the dog "Caw." Now she says, one hundred percent of the time, "Cava." Well, actually, she says something more like "Caba." That makes sense, doesn't it? Isn't the labiodental sound v hard to make when she doesn't have her front teeth yet? Or am I making this up? I am not exactly sure about the order of acquisition of phonemes. Another thing I need to look up.

At any rate, the enunciation is getting clearer and clearer. Baby is another word that now has two distinct syllables. A week ago, she said it more like the French word, bébé.

Her language is changing so fast at this point, I feel like I am having a hard time keeping up. The words are flying out of her mouth, and if I duck, I'm going to miss something.

Two is company

We are now reaching a stage where I think it is accurate to begin referring to V as "bilingual." Let's keep in mind, of course, that she is only 14 months old, so it's not like she is participating in long conversations or reading literature in either Swedish or English. Even as her mother, I must be modest in these claims. I feel I can start to call her bilingual at this point for a couple of reasons. First, she seems to have about as many words in Swedish as in English. Second, and more importantly, she seems to have grasped the fact that, in some cases, she has two words for the same concept. The best examples so far are bollen/the ball, anka/duck, and hunden/the dog.

That is not to say that she separates these out 100 percent of the time for all of her "people." Today, for example, she pointed to a duck and told me "anka." Later, she pointed to a duck (the girl has a lot of ducks!) and said to her pappa, "Duck, duck." Then she seemed to realize, "Wait, this is Pappa," and she switched to "anka, anka." Needless to say, he was impressed.

A new trick is the repetition of animal noises. You know, the classic, "What does the X say?" Interesting here is that these are a mixed bag. It must be too much for her to absorb that in Swedish the pig says "nöff, nöff," but in English it says "oink, oink." So V just has one animal sound per animal, and these noises are a mixture of English and Swedish. The pig, for example, speaks Swedish in V's world. The chicken, however, is strictly English speaking (bock, bock, bock, bock, bock). The dog/hund works out OK, because "woof, woof," works in both languages. At least the kid gets some breaks!

New words in the past week or so include star (she points at our Christmas stars), pretty, car, and egg. This is ägg in Swedish, which is pronounced the same as the English word, so it doesn't count in the "bilingual" list mentioned above.

Words that she got only part of the time before and has now mastered include bye-bye (she nows understands in what situations to use it, which is a big step) and, it seems, no.

The word egg gets applied to a lot of concepts. Anything that has an oval shape gets called egg. Anything that has a round or circular shape (even the polka dots on her shirts, for example) gets called "ball." This distinction is quite interesting; apparently on some level she recognizes different shapes.*

The Finnish is still hard to assess. It seems she has at least a couple of words, but she doesn't use them when she is with us (of course). She will be spending more time with her babysitter and Finnish-speaking friends as of January, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

*This just happened (I am writing this addendum the next day): V just noticed a little star shape on the car she got for Christmas, and she pointed and said, "Star." So definitely she recognizes shapes. I guess this is no different, though, from recognizing, say, a dog, a baby, or a banana. Right?

Det är amazing

The past few weeks have been amazing in many ways, not limited to linguistic development, but certainly the linguistic developments have been a high point (let's hear it again for dorky linguist parents!).

First, a report on a big moment for V and her pappa. Have I mentioned that V likes pictures and books? She could easily spend as many hours a day poring over books as we would let her. One of her favorite books has pictures of her with people she knows and loves. She was looking at this book with her pappa, and he asked her (in Swedish, of course), "Where's mamma?" V pointed, and answered, plain as day, "Där är mamma!" This gorgeous little utterance was her first complete sentence in Swedish, and Pete nearly jumped out of his chair for joy. I have to say I was quite impressed, as well.

Her Swedish continues to develop, but in a different direction than her English. As I have mentioned before, this seems to be bound up with the personal relationships; in other words, the output depends on who says what to her. One of the things she does with her dad is to look at pictures of animals. At this point, she knows how to respond to most of the "What does the ---- say?" questions, but mostly in Swedish. The only animal names she knows in English so far are cat and dog, and she can respond with what they say. In Swedish she knows cow, pig, horse, etc.

This is interesting: before, I wrote that she seems to have only one word per concept, without overlap. In other words, she doesn't really seem to have two languages yet, just language. However, we have now seen our first element of overlap, and it is with her favorite thing of all: the dog. She knows the word hund in Swedish, and she knows the word dog in English. When her pappa asks, "Vad säger hunden?" she answers "woof." When I ask, "What does the dog say?" she also answers "woof." This is the very first example we have of her identifying the same concept in two languages, and this is EXCITING. Let the bilingualism begin!

Her semantic field is changing, too. I wrote sometime before that, for example, all food was "bread" to her. That has changed as of a couple of weeks ago. Now, just bread is bread. If she doesn't know the word for some kind of food she wants, she might still call it "bread." Like her nighttime bottle, for instance. However, she calls a banana "banana" and cheese "cheese." She also says "apple" (she says it and certain other two-syllable words in a really cute way: she emphasizes the second syllable and give it a rising pitch, so it comes out like "app-ELL?"). This is where it gets interesting: it seems to be the case that any round fruit is, in her mind, an apple. If she sees an orange, a mango, a kiwi--whatever--she points and says, "apple." The same thing still goes for dogs: any animal with four legs that she doesn't have another name for (zebra, horse, etc.) is a dog.

There is a lot of mimicking going on, no matter what language or sounds she hears. So, for example, if her German or Finnish friends are around, she mimicks "nein, nein, nein," or "voi, voi, voi, voi, voi," clearly because she likes the sound of it, not because she knows what it means. A few days ago, a friend of ours said, "Voi, voi, voi, voi, voi," in Finnish, which means something like "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear," and Vera just loved it. She kept saying this "voi, voi" thing at all the right moments in the subsequent conversation, and the laughter she elicited every time absolutely thrilled her. It's amazing how fast they learn through such positive feedback.

I have been pleased with her recent acquisition of the word more. I believe this is the first word she has used that doesn't fit into a noun or verb category. She really gets this word, too. Another exciting milestone for the linguist mom.

Is there any evidence that she is trilingual at this point? Not much, I'd say. She seems to know a few words in Finnish, but at this point they are just mixed in with her language (remember, for the most part she doesn't seem to have languages--with a plural--yet). I might be making this up, but I think she seems genuinely confused when we enter into a Finnish speaking situation, and especially when she hears me speaking Finnish. Actually, she probably is old enough to get the difference, now that I think about it. When her Finnish grandmother is around, for example, V says the words she knows in Swedish and English and isn't responsive to the Finnish her grandmother says. The other day when I took her to her little music class, she seemed confused as to what was happening in a way I hadn't noticed during previous classes. I am sure this is because her comprehension, especially in English, is very high already. For example, if I tell her to bring me her shoes, socks, her toothbrush, or a book, she readily does as requested. What I am getting at is that it must be confusing for her when we enter into a situation where she suddenly can't understand anything (like when we are with Finnish speakers). I'll be watching closely for signs that she is beginning to realize that these are different languages.

A word about words

At this point--and I have a feeling this could be the case for some time--V only has one term for each individual concept. In other words, a candle is always ljus, and dog is always dog (not hund, like in Swedish), etc. I can't think of any exceptions to this. So the languages are definitely not sorted out yet: she doesn't know both the Swedish and the English word for all of the things in her universe.

Still, her universe is expanding! She takes delight in stringing all of the words she knows together. Yesterday morning, for example, she was laying in her bed saying, "Mamma bear, baby bear ..." I don't think she knows that that means, necessarily, she is just playing with language.

She continues to use an awful lot of nonverbal communication, as well. It's mostly pointing at this stage, which is, of course, a very effective tool. She points at the food she wants, she points at her bottle when she wants to go lay down, she points or lifts her hands when she wants me to carry her. The cuddling and patting continues, as well. If she likes someone, she reaches over to pat their arm. During the past few days, she has become more attached to her nighttime bear. When she sees it, she hugs it to her chest and says, "Oooooh, bear."

Her pronunciation of bear is "baw." This is typical, of course, and could continue until she is even 5 or so. Other than the r sound, I honestly have to say that I think the rest of the English phonemes are more or less there. A couple of weeks ago I wrote that she didn't seem to have the n sound; she pronounced it perfectly in all word positions only a couple of days later. She has offered perfect renditions of her sister's name, which starts with n.