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.

Fireworks

V's speech has left me speechless several times during the last few days. She constantly surprises me with what she has stored, what she can mimic, and how adept she is at using what she knows to get her point across. It's like an explosion of skills.

Here is a good example of using what she knows to get her point across: when she wants to go outside, she says "woof." It's not because she hears a dog or sees a picture of a dog, but because she knows, of course, that when we go out we see dogs. She accompanies the little woofs by pointing out the window, for extra measure. Here is another example: yesterday she went to the front door and repeated "baby, baby" and her little friend's name. She was also pointing up. I got the message loud and clear: she was bored with me and wanted to play with her baby friend who lives upstairs. When I grabbed her and carried her out the door, she laughed with delight, no doubt at least in part because she had succeeded in communicating--but mostly because she was going to play.

V is learning when the same word applies across concepts. For a long time, the only "nose" was her mamma's, or maybe pappa's (but of course his nose is a näsa). A couple of days ago she had her rubber ducky, which, oddly, is one of her favorite things in the world, and she pointed to the little beak and said, "nose." Since, she has done the same thing to her teddy bears.

It seems to be the case that, officially, V has learned her first word in Finnish. We were listening to her repeat a word that sounded close to mamma, but not quite. This didn't make sense, since mamma is one of her most distinctly articulated words. We realized that she was saying mennään, which means "let's go" in Finnish. I asked V's babysitter, and she verified: yes, V has learned that word from her time with the babysitter and the other kids.

New words at this point include brush (brushing her teeth is now part of the nightly ritual), uh-oh (not exactly new; she mimicked it before but now knows what it means), eyes, mouth, yes, no, and Swedish nej.

Now a word about nonverbals. V expresses her love for something by patting and petting, and she often says, "Oooooh," to accompany her pats. Lucky creatures who receive this treatment include me, her pappa, our dog, her goodnight bear, her rubber ducky, and her friend from upstairs. I am not sure where she learned this behavior, although her favorite book for a long time has been Pat the Bunny. That might explain the patting, anyway.

More than just bread

I realized a couple of days ago that V now seems to realize that bread refers to a particular kind of food, not all food. She calls bread by name, that is, and she also has a couple of other food names at this point. Still, in a tight spot, meaning when she is hungry, she says in a really emphatic way, "Breeeeeead." That's her way of saying she is hungry. These kids are genius! They use the few words they know to communicate.

Speaking of which, she actually does use her few words almost constantly and with great delight. When we sit at the table, for example, or when we look at books, V supplies a constant narration of the things she sees--or, more accurately, the things she sees that she has a name for: lamppa, bread, banana, nose, etc.

I have to come clean now and admit that I am probably overselling her verbal skills (what--no way!!!). I can understand what she says because I am around her almost constantly. Her bread and her woof come out quite clearly, as well as mamma. At this point, however, she does not have a full command of consonants and definitely not her vowels. Actually, I think she has most of her consonants, save for the n, the liquids, and the labiodental fricatives (f, v). Her version of banana comes out as "bapa." In other words, the initial bilabial stop gets repeated. When she tries to say her sister's name, which starts with an n, it comes out with a d sound, so it sounds like she is saying "dada." In this case she has the place of articulation right, but not the manner of articulation. It's interesting to me that she has the m sound already but not the n.

Ladybug

Seriously, I am not making this up: today V mimicked when I pointed out a ladybug in her new book, and she said it perfectly. I was astonished. We are onto monosyllables!

I wrote a while back about how I thought she uttered what I thought might be a sentence, even though it was clearly not intentional on her part at this stage. She now says a nearly complete sentence on a routine basis: Want dat, which means, of course "I want that." The subject, the books say, will come much, much later. Personal pronouns are among the last of the grammatical elements that children master.

Here is a list of the words she uses regularly at this stage: ljus ('light' in Swedish), lamppa ('lamp' in Swedish), hej ('hello' in Swedish), baby, bye-bye, Daddy, Mamma, woof, nose, apple, duck, ball, banana, fish, bread, woof, dat ('that'), toes, and what seems to be kiss and book. Not a bad start!

Bring on the fricatives!

She's got fricatives*! V is mimicking all kinds of words and sounds now. It seems to be the big thing, in fact. In English she says toes, cheese, and other words I cannot seem to conjure up at the moment. Of course she doesn't have perfect pronunciation, but the fricatives are definitely there. In Swedish she says ljus 'light.'

I have noticed that the vowels seem quite hit and miss. Today, for example, we were looking at a book about what things make what sounds, and when I said "beep beep," her version was "bap bap."

Communication seems very important for her. She enjoys social situations. She says hej in Swedish now, which means hello, and she says bye bye in English. Of course she also waves hello and goodbye a lot.

*This is a term I realize might not be familiar for nonlinguistics (ie, normal people). I usually tell my introductory students that a fricative is any sound they can use to describe air coming out of a tire: ssss, zzzzz, ffffff, thhhhhh, etc.

V at 12 months

The words seem to be spilling out V at this point. She constantly surprises us. Not all of them seem to have semantic content for her, however; she is simply a very good mimic.

The bulk of her vocabulary still is in English: baby, banana, meow, pear ... and that's all I can think of at the moment that is new.

She continues to learn equivalent concepts in English and in Swedish. For example, if I say, "Where is Mamma's nose?" she points to my nose. If her dad says the same thing in Swedish, she successfully points out the right body part. And that's something! My nose is a much bigger target than her dad's.

I mentioned that V is a good mimic. This applies not only to words, but to "non-words" as well. I realized that she doesn't distinguish, for the most part, between a "word" (whatever that means; we linguists manage to complicate even what normal people would consider a common-sense concept like what a word is) and "nonsense." It is normal for a baby to experiment with the full capability of the human vocal apparatus, and then over time this robust repertoire is whittled down only to those sounds that are necessary to speak her native language(s). This is why, for example, an English speaker, like me, who hasn't learned to pronounce the French uvular "r" as a child may find it difficult to do so later in life. Or why Japanese people find it difficult to differentiate between "l" and "r" in English, etc. What amazes me is that, given the number of cool sounds humans are capable of making, it is usually a predictable set of them that tend to be used to make words in the vast majority of the world's languages. A comprehensive list of these sounds is represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet.