We have experienced more "bursts" during the past couple of weeks. V is changing fast in many ways. The most significant development is that she started being truly mobile, preferring to be upright and walking rather than on the floor. I am not sure if it is a coincidence or if these things are developmentally related, but her advanced mobility coincides with noteworthy changes in her use of language.
Just for the record, I'll give an overview of V's language(s) at 18 months.
Today I noticed her first use of noun phrases -- the next step up, of course, from nouns. It was basic enough, but a clear milestone in her development of syntax. She said several instances of a genitive plus a noun: Vera's nose. Mamma's nose. Mamma's eyes. Vera's eyes. Previously, her verbalization of these observations would have been just Mamma's. Vera's. Nose. You get the idea.
She uses an awful lot of adjectives at the moment. The most frequent is no doubt broken. She used to say "uh-oh" whenever she encountered some problem, like trying to get her shoes on, for example. Now she says, "Broken," when she is trying to do something and it isn't going well. Other frequent adjectives are hot and little. The context for little is quite predictable, and merits mention for its clues about her cognition. V doesn't seem to grasp at this point what big and little mean, although I think it is sinking in, and she is starting to use the words. For example, V loves shoes of all shapes and sizes, and she frequently tries to put her sister's Barbie shoes on her own feet. She then gets frustrated because, obviously (to you and me, anyway), Barbie shoes don't fit her. I tried to explain this to her numerous times, saying, "These shoes are too little for you." Since most of her vocabulary is mimicking at this point, she now repeats, "Little, little" when she tries to put the Barbie shoes on.
Her mimicking is so astute that I am often surprised when she says certain words, words that I wouldn't have thought she had yet acquired. Recent examples are the words towel, drum, and pee.
Also on the topic of adjectives, V is fascinated by the idea of color names (although at this point she seems to use them as nouns, not as adjectives). She likes to point to objects that are of one color and say whatever color first comes to mind. Sometimes she gets it right, so I confirm her observation. This clearly pleases her. It's a bit more humorous, though, when she points at something--a flower, say--and announces, "Yellow" (which she pronounces "lellow"). I correct her: "No, that's red," but she has a different opinion. "Yellow," she says. So I repeat "Red," and it goes on for a few turns, until finally she concedes, "Red." Whew. The only color names she knows right now are in English, and these are blue, red, yellow, and green. I think she might still be a long way off from uttering an adjectival phrase, for example "Red flower."
V refers to people in pictures--and also in person--according to the names of people she already knows. Any women (or sometimes men--very pretty men!) in ads who have dark or reddish hair are "Mamma." She recently pointed to a picture of Julia Roberts and said "Mamma," so you can imagine how much I appreciate that. Lately, any man she sees in an ad who has dark hair is "Pierre," the name of a friend of ours. Yesterday I think she gave a man in a shop a bit of a shock. He was shaved bald and was wearing glasses, just like V's father. V pointed at the man and said, "Pappa." He looked alarmed when she said that, so I played it up and said to him, "Surprise!" Well, he seemed to have a sense of humour about it.
There are lots of examples of multiple codes. V's multilingualism continues to develop. The other day, just to see what would happen, I asked her in Finnish, "Where is your ear?" This is a question she readily answers from the Finnish speakers she knows. When I said it in Finnish, however, she gave me a very strange look, as if she were trying to process what I was saying. She thought for a moment(usually her response to such questions is automatic), then flashed me a smile, as if we were sharing a joke, and she touched her ears, showing me that she understood.
I know I am not supposed to speak Finnish to her, but I just wanted to see what would happen!
No comments:
Post a Comment