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?

Twinkle twinkle

Lots to comment about just now.

Today was V's first full day with her babysitter, and there was already something to discuss. When I went to pick her up, the babysitter said, "She's really verbal," which I thought was interesting. I have always kind of thought so, but then of course I do, I am her mother. But the babysitter said that other kids she has taken care of don't really talk until they are two years old. V has been talking a bluestreak since she was about ten months.

The most recent development, in Finnish, was the word for star, which in Finnish is tähti. This brings her total number of Finnish words up to four: mennään 'let's go,' voi voi 'oh dear,' anna 'give,' and tähti.

Star is another one of those concepts that she has words for in each language, including, as of today, in Finnish. We sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in English, and she shows the twinkling with her hands, opening and closing her fingers. She also points when her pappa says "stjärna" in Swedish, but she doesn't say it yet. She actually says star and tähti.

She has got a few speech acts already. Not surprising, the most prevalent so far seems to be the request. Tonight, for example, she kept repeating, "Bottle, bottle," and I ignored her and gave her other food (we usually just give her a bottle when she goes down for the night). Finally, she grabbed my hand, took me to the kitchen, pointed to the cupboard where we keep her milk and bottles, and then she pointed to the microwave. "Bottle," she said again. OK, this time I got it: she wanted a bottle, and she wanted it NOW, not later. She knows how to ask for what she wants!

Now a word about her pronunciation. Bottle is a new word for her, as of a couple of days ago. It's interesting that she says it with an aspirated t, like a speaker of upper-class British English would (RP). The reason this is interesting to me is because I am her pronunciation model for this word, and I say bottle with an American flap, which most people think sound like a d (ie, something like baudle). So where does she get this t sound from? Or is this a good example of how the phoneme gets acquired before the allophones? Curious.

I noticed tonight that she definitely doesn't have the l sound yet. We were playing with her toy fruits and vegetables, and every time she handed me the lemon, it sounded like either Yemen (as in the country that has been in the news lately on account of its al-Quida activity) or nemon.

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.