Could it be ... syntax?

This is going to come off as disjointed, because there are lots of things happening, all over the place, with V's language. A few weeks ago I compared her progress to an explosion, and it seems to be that this is the norm now. She feels less and less like a baby in many ways, and her language is one of the strongest examples of this.

I'll start with her phonology. A few weeks ago I reported that her vowels were all over the place. That has changed. She can now mimic any vowel sound I try to get her to produce--even [i], as in beep beep. She also seems to have most of her consonants, even though some of them would not be readily recognized by someone who is not her mother. For example, she routinely produces the alveolar fricative (the sound represented by "sh" in English) as "ssss." For example, when I say, "Be quiet, Cava's sleeping," she says, "Sssssss" when her target, of course, is "Shhhhhh." Then there are other sounds that she has in some positions or sound sequences, that she nonetheless can't seem to produce in certain word positions. Like the [s] sound, for example, that I have just been discussing. Her aunt is named Sirpa, but V calls her 'Hippa.' V's babysitter is named Saila, but V calls her 'Laila.' In other words, she has the [s] sound in some instances, but not in others. Another example is the word lampa, which is a word V says A LOT. Every time, though, she pronounces it as 'almpa,' ie, tranposing the first two sounds. Lately, she has been playing with phonology, making nonsense words out of words she knows very well. For a couple of days, for example, she has been calling me 'mammaly,' even though she certainly knows how to say the word mamma! In fact, I am starting to think it is her very best word ...

Now onto her morphology. I am very excited to report that V seems to have acquired her first English morpheme: the possessive 's. This, of course, is a natural reaction to me telling her "no" when she reaches, for example, for my coffee cup, important papers, that kind of thing. She now points to such items and says of her own accord, "Mamma's." She also says "Vera's," (although it comes out sounding more like "baby's"), as well as "Pappa's." I am so proud of her first morpheme!


Moving on to her lexical inventory ... new acquisitions include "vakkie," which is V's word for vacuum. Oddly enough, the vacuum is something which seems to cause her a great deal of excitement, but that's another story. Other new lexical items provide further evidence of emerging bilingualism: water/vatten and bear/nalle.

Today there was a rather glorious moment when I realized V might be producing her first kind of sentence-y type thing. Yes, syntax is happening, just like Chomksy told us. It was getting rather late in the evening, past the time her dad usually comes home from work, and Vera caught my attention: "Mamma." Then, looking in my eyes, she pointed to the door and said, "Pappa." This is a simple utterance, but I have to view it as a question: she was asking where her pappa was; why wasn't he home yet.

I would like to add a few other observations, also having to do with cognition (perhaps more so than language). I noted a few weeks ago that her first experience with heartbreak had already occurred: her first best friend, our upstairs neighbor, moved away just before Christmas. The first few days after she was gone, V woke up every morning repeating her name. Now, more than three weeks later, her pleas for her friend have diminished but still not ceased altogether. At least a few times a day, something prompts the memory of her friend, and she repeats her name to me. It's so sad!

Also on a cognitive level, there are lots of requests, mostly nonverbal. In fact, V is getting quite insistent and is showing strong evidence of her own willpower. She has begun to take us firmly by the hand, invoking us to pet her teddy bear, stroke her head, turn the pages of her book, or take her for a walk. If she is playing alone and something goes wrong--her ball rolls under the sofa, for example--she comes to one of us and says, "Uh-oh," and points to whatever the problem is. Another stroke of genius: so much information is tied up in that little word uh-oh!

I think that's it for now. I might be writing this in a void, but, if not, I would like to know if I am using too much linguistic jargon for this to be understandable ... or interesting?