Status update

In the very first blog entry I posted here, I wrote that I would estimate that V's linguistic input is 75 percent English, 20 percent Swedish, and 5 percent Finnish. Things have changed in our household since the mom went back to work, however. These days, V is with her Finnish-speaking babysitter and Finnish-speaking children three days a week. That makes a big difference! I would now estimate that V's linguistic input is 60 percent English, 20 percent Swedish, and 20 percent Finnish. Of course it's a bit hard to figure, because when her dad is home in the evenings, both English and Swedish are flying around, so the amount of English might actually be something like 10 percent higher. Almost all of her input at this point is through direct address--in other words, because someone is talking to her. Sometimes in the morning I have the BBC news on in the background, but I don't think she listens to it ... unless it sinks in, anyway. That's another question that I don't really know the answer to.

At this point, English is most definitely V's main language. I would estimate that something like 75-70 percent of her wordstock is in English.

Still, in the past couple of weeks or so, I have been quite amazed to see firsthand that she switches to Swedish when her dad comes home. I am not kidding! At the age of 15 months, she is already cognizant of the fact that her pappa uses a different linguistic code. A few weeks ago I reported with glee that she had a few concepts for which she has two words, one in Swedish and one in English. At this point, there are so many examples of her bilingualism that I would be hard-pressed to think of them all.

That said, there is definite mixing of codes--although, not as much as I would have thought. The few examples I can think of are a bit perplexing for me. For instance, one of her very early words was bread. She used that word to refer to any kind of food; she used the word a lot. Now, even though she still knows the word bread, of course, she seems to prefer the Swedish word, macka. She uses the Swedish word even when talking to me, and, like I mentioned, it's unclear why. Maybe she just likes the sound of the Swedish word better? It's more novel at this point than bread? Who knows.

Although English is currently her main language, I fully expect that this will change, and, depending on what kind of school she goes to, her strongest language will be either Swedish or Finnish. After all, we are living in Finland, where the matrix language is Finnish (and, to a lesser extent, Swedish). Any parent knows that the child's own peer group has a far greater influence on language (and many other matters) than the parents.

It's peculiar that, as of yet, I don't notice V using any Finnish at all. I get the idea that she mostly uses English when she talks to her babysitter, even though the babysitter always speaks Finnish to her. V seems to understand some Finnish now--although not much--and she doesn't seem to use any Finnish words. I suspect this will change quite fast as she continues to play with her babysitter and Finnish kids.

Addendum: I had just finished writing this blog entry and sat down to read some books with Vera. Immediately she pointed to a picture of a cat and said, "Kissa." That is the Finnish word for cat. So, I was wrong: she does have Finnish words--at least one, anyway. I am surprised!

"Mouse!"

Words come flying out of V's mouth now that make me think, "Where did you learn that?" Words like mouse, boots, pretty, and macka, which is Swedish for a little sandwich.

I was successful in making a voice recording of us looking at a book together, but I was not successful in figuring how to upload it in a very good way onto this blog site. It is strange to me that this blog service we are using would support video but not audio, but that seems to be the case. So now you can see a very shaky and seasick-inducing visual and audio of V's response to a book. (You can also see Cava, our dog, come to investigate what is going on.) It's not so easy to hold a recording device with one hand, a book with the other, and a wriggly kid on your lap! At any rate, I think it's interesting to hear how her phonology actually works, and there are lots of good examples in this short video. Many of the words, I am sure, would not be recognizable if I were not there to "translate." Enjoy!

More morphemes

Tonight I was actually quite shocked to hear V use the English plural. The plural form she used was "balls." I am pretty sure it was not an accident, because she very readily uses the singular form when she sees just one ball. In this case, there were a bunch of tiny balls inside a plastic toy she has. I think I can pretty safely say that this is her second morpheme. The first was the possessive -s, now comes the plural -s.

Wordstock

One week ago, clear as a bell, came V's first complete sentence in Swedish. Her sister had just shown up, as well as our dog, Cava, and so naturally V was very excited. The trouble is that Cava is somewhat advanced in years and usually hides from V. V was wandering around the apartment, repeating, "Cava, Cava." Finally, she came to Nova and me and asked, "Var är Cava?" It was so clearly enunciated that we could barely believe our ears. Too bad her dad wasn't there to hear it!

I have mentioned many times that she is very good at mimicking. Lately, I have noticed that she has picked up certain key features of the English intonation system, which, believe me, differs greatly from that of Finnish and Swedish. For example, in English we tend to use a rising intonation when we ask a question--otherwise it sounds like a statement. If you don't use the rising intonation, people might be confused as to whether or not you are asking a question, so in other words the rising intonation actually carries meaning. These days, a lot of people in the United States also use this rising intonation feature when they make statements, which, you might guess, makes them sound like they are always asking questions. I am sure you have noticed this--I know I have, especially since I moved away from the States. It's interesting that this so-called "uptalk" seems to be a feature of white speech only, from what I understand.

Anyway, about the question intonation. V already has this feature mastered, which points toward its great importance in effective communication in English. Other languages, such as Finnish, don't make use of intonation for meaning, which might be hard to imagine if you are really used to English. Finnish has other stuff, mostly suffixes, that indicate whether, for example, something is a question or a statement.

Here is another example about intonation. You know how moms talk incessant nonsense to their babies, right? Today I was doing that when I was dressing her to leave. I asked her, "Are we going to go see your babysitter?"

V looked up at me and issued a pitch perfect, "Mmmm-hmmm!" What was so funny about it was that it sounded exactly like people in the Southern United States. Picture someone from the Plantation South, for example, talking about if they like pecan pie. "Do I like pecan pie? Mmmm-hmmm!" And that's what V did--like a perfect little Southerner.


Here are a few words that are new on the lexical front: avocado, sockies, milk, pretty.

Just for fun, I thought I would try to list out all of her current wordstock. I'll stick to just the English words for now, because I would have to think too hard to come up with the Swedish and Finnish words (!).

These are the things that she can answer "What does the X say?": cat, cow, horse, duck, clock, chicken, dog, pig (the horse sound is REALLY cute!)

These are words that she uses at will, in no particular order: star, dog, cat, duck, bear, brush, diaper, shoes, bath, ball, no, socks, hat, baby, cheese, banana, avocado, milk, bottle, clock, cookie, bread, book, lamp, toes, nose, mouth, eyes, more, uh-oh, shhhhhh (does that count?), kiss . There are also some dozen or so proper names that she knows, names for friends and family.

It shouldn't be surprising that her comprehension is far greater than her production. Any of us who try to speak a foreign language know about this linguistic truism. For example, she understands the words finger, nice, sleeping, but she doesn't say any of them--yet.

Play it again, seahorse

V has a little seahorse toy that our friends gave her. If you push its stomach, it plays lullabies. This toy is part of our nighttime ritual. Vera listens to the songs while she cuddles with her night-night bear. It usually works like a charm, and she falls asleep within minutes. A couple of nights ago, the songs stopped playing, and I heard silence, so I assumed V was sleeping. Then I heard a series of "No, no, no, no, no" from her room. And then "Duck, duck, duck, duck." Then "No duck, no duck, no duck, no duck." All of this came out in a very sad and desperate little voice. When I went to check on her, V was pressing her hand against the seahorses's belly, trying to get it to play its songs again. V indicated what she wanted me to do: to get the songs to play over again. When I complied, she soon feel asleep.

A couple of days ago, I made claims that V was doing something syntax-y with her language. I would say that this is another example. Obviously, V doesn't know the word seahorse, nor does she know the word play or again. She doesn't know how to say "Play the seahorse again," so she was using the words she knew and that seemed to apply. In this case, the seahorse was a "duck," and she was telling me "no," as in, "The 'duck' (seahorse) is not playing."

Well, it probably goes without saying that I thought this was fabulous. Here is another example of a small child with a limited lexical repertoire using whatever words she can to get what she wants. OK, so she called her seahorse a duck, but that's still pretty damn good! She could have called it "dog" or "cat" or any of the other words she knows, but the concept of "duck," obviously, was the closest word she had for this particular object.

A few days ago she started calling me "mammaly/mammala." Now the same pattern has extended to her dad; she calls him "pappala."

Another interesting point is her learned social behavior. V already loves to "feed" her baby with a toy bottle, and she likes to pretend to eat and to feed us as well with her toy forks, spoons, etc.

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.