Overthinking Language Acquisition

[oloriel]

Throughout the past months, every now and then someone would ask, "Is Felix talking already?"
Ever since he started babbling, my reply was "He is - we just don't understand him yet."

In the past week, I've been realising how true that is. It's not that Felix isn't using language to communicate: It's just that he doesn't speak our language yet.
It also means that we don't speak his language.

Of course, he has been using certain syllables or phrases more often than others right from the beginning: From the wide range of sounds that can be produced with the human speech apparatus, he may well have tried (mostly) all, but he clearly had and has his favourites. In the past week, this has become particularly noticeable, to the extent that sound-combinations occur - always, and sometimes exclusively - in certain kinds of situations.

And when we* say "Of course, he isn't using proper words yet..." or "Not long now before he starts talking", I think we're really being unfair, arrogant, and wrong. We're focusing on what's not yet happened, instead of stopping to celebrate what is really happening right now, right there, right in front of our eyes (or ears, in this case).

Certain sound-combinations occur in certain kinds of situations.
That means that Felix is categorising situations and events. Never mind what those categories are, how simplistic or broad or general or removed from our grown-up life-world they are: Felix' little mind is drawing lines between some things and other things, and some events and other events. He is ordering the world according to some principle (even though we may not share or even see it) --
And he is giving names to things.

I cannot express my amazement at this realisation clearly enough. He is giving names to things. He is ten months old and re-enacting one of the key moments in the evolution of human culture: looking at things, judging them, and putting a name to them. In very general terms (presumably: at any rate, the part of Felix' lexicon that he is sharing with us is pretty simplistic), very broad names. But what a creative act!
(I really cannot repeat it often enough: What an amazing creative act!)

Of course, this means I am in trouble.

On the one hand, of course I cannot wait until he calls me Mama (rather than addressing any person he knows or finds reasonably trustworthy as "bababa"). I can't wait for his first "proper" words, for his first two-word sentences, for the first "why?"s; for the first stories he tells us, and that we can understand.

On the other hand, I am fascinated by the realisation that he is currently making up his own language. (Anyone who has ever dabbled in con-lang creation may know how hard that is!) Oh sure, it doesn't have much by way of lexicon or syntax, but it still is a language in its own right, or at least getting there. Ten months old and he is creating his own proto-language. And who is to say that a-buh! is any less valid than here! is? or that you need to differentiate between "I am here!" or "You are here!" or "I am holding something in my hands right here!" or "Come here!" or "I want to have that here with me!" or whatever else Felix wants to express when he says a-buh!, when context helps (more or less) to understand his precise meaning? (Yes, yes, I know: It's got to be arbitrary and context-independent in order to be a proper language. Proto-language it is, then!)

Of course Felix will have to (and, as far as we know, will want to) learn our language eventually. The purpose of language is communication, and though I find it unfair that such a small person has to adjust to our language rather than the other way round, I can hardly ask any speaker of German to instead adjust to Felix' language, or that of any other baby. There is little use for a private language (unless you want to be yet another "The Next Tolkien" - but even that wouldn't work without first learning the standard language that's spoken around you!). It may be arrogant and unfair not to acknowledge that Felix is already talking right now, but it would be unfair and short-sighted to keep him from discovering (on his own terms) a shared language in the long term.

But I can't help feeling a bit sorry that this great achievement of his, his very own (proto-)language, is going to be lost and forgotten once he learns German. Well, obviously it isn't, not entirely, because I'm going to try and keep a dictionary. So I rather feel sorry for all the other proto-languages created by novice speakers all over the world all the time, that are created and used for a few weeks and then lost and forgotten forever. And I can certainly celebrate this amazing creative accomplishment while it's happening.
Which I am hereby doing.

Hello, my name is Lyra, and my son is speaking his very own language.
BOW LOW TO HIS GENIUS.


- - -
*This being a generic "we", as in "grown-ups talking about babies in general".

Comments

[barbardin.livejournal.com]

*laughs and bows*
...*humbly.*

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

I never thought of it that way, though I have watched it happen from up close. I am prickling with awe.

And we all did that, all the people everywhere, who have ever learned the language of their immediate world. It is to goosebump.

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

You're awesome. I hope Felix appreciates your awesomeness as much as you appreciate his.

[yoodi.livejournal.com]

I've been preaching this since forever, but no one would listen. I think the Linguists at my Uni are just stuck with Chomsky, still. *rolleyes*

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, nothing wrong with Chomsky per se, as long as you don't skip other parts of language development or preach Innateness as the gospel truth... ^^

[allamistako.livejournal.com]

*Bows*

I still think that everyone has their own personal language that just happens to resemble the languages of the people around them. But then I'm not a linguist ;)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

To some extent, linguists would likely agree - at least on the level of pragmatics. That's why two people can say the exact same thing and yet mean something completely different... XD

[furius.livejournal.com]

I wonder if every baby relate to the world the same way, or would such proto-languages reveal that certain children have more sense of direction/numbers/colours/faces? Do they distinguish situations/circumstances/conditions individually or according to the language they'll be learning.........

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Awesome question! I have no idea, but I'd assume that even at that early age, different babies would relate to the world differently, depending both on talent and on their surroundings. That would be a fascinating thing to research! I just wonder how you could go about it, seeing how the babies can't give you additional information...

[fuchs.livejournal.com]

I can heartily recommend making some audio recordings. I still have Henni's "Hundi" and baby laugh...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*bowing low to brilliant Felix and singing to him in Sindarin*

What he's doing is known as idioglossia (http://multiples.about.com/od/twintoddlers/a/twintalk.htm), which is often seen most notably in identical twins, but all babies do it to some extent, especially in bilingual families. It's not truly 'making up a new language' - rather, it's him putting together the phonemes he's heard since his auditory nerve first developed: the Mother Tongue. He's speaking German, or trying to; his auditory processing and his vocal apparatus just aren't quite calibrated yet.

My Filipino friend's baby would walk around babbling away into her toy cell phone, and she had her Mommy's exact cadence and intonation, so that to the non-Elongo-speaker, she sounded just like she was speaking Elongo. She wasn't really, though; it was just the standard baby-jibber, that happens before the concept of vocabulary, this-sound-means-this-thing, really sinks in.

Charming as it is, one doesn't want to prolong idioglossia by repeating back the child's idiosyncratic words. It's like anyone else trying to learn a language: he needs to hear the correct pronunciation. Pretty soon, he'll get to where it's easier for you to tell what word he's trying to say, and then you can model it back for him. LOL, can't really do that in the baby-jibber phase, because it's still 'sounds' and not yet 'words'.

You'll see an analogous phenomenon when he's about 3, and wants to 'write', but doesn't yet grok the concept of this-letter-means-this-sound, or is starting to get that, but doesn't know the letters yet. Lines of odd, scribbly symbols - sometimes with enough 'form' of writing that one might take it for such at first glance - I had one little boy in my classroom once who'd fill whole pages with 'writing' like that. It looked really cool, but it it didn't mean anything, because it was still 'shapes' and not 'letters'.

The content will fill in soon enough; meanwhile, the blossoming of the form is amazing in its own right. :)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, of course it isn't an entirely independent language. But he's combining the German phonemes (as yet) in new and creative ways, so it still is his own proto-language, not German (not even baby German).

I actually remember the "writing" phenomenon from my cousins' childhood! They'd swear it was writing, too, but secret writing that only they could read. XD

Don't worry, I'm talking to him mostly normally! Well, Motherese, of course... "Yes, that is a cat! Cuddly cat! Soft cat! That is Náro, our cat!" >_> Well, it's proper words, at least? ^^

It really is amazing. But of course, I'm amazed by everything he does!

[hhimring]

What a wonderful thing to be able to observe!

[naurring.livejournal.com]

What a great accomplishment! \o/

I really liked the part about children's language acquisition when I was studying linguistics. This might not seem to consist of much now, but there's so much he had to learn to be able to create and assign his few words. If you ask me, it's really awe inspiring. It must be a very difficult thing for a baby to learn their first language. We can just take a grammar book and a dictionary and look things up when we learn a language, but he has to figure all the rules out by himself!

Regarding a slightly different matter, if you don't mind me asking: Do you have the impression that he understands what you say to him? That he (perhaps not every time, of course) reacts to your words rather than to just the sound of your voice?

It was something that really surprised me when I was in France, because the baby, when he was about Felix's age, seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what you were saying, even though he couldn't answer yet, ouf course. I certainly hadn't expected that and whenever I tell this to anybody they usually think I was seeing things - 'it's just a baby after all'. So I was wondering what you were experiencing.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yes, language acquisition really is fascinating! And watching it happen "live" is especially brilliant.

Concerning your question: Yes, I have that impression - that he understands at least the gist of what I say, when he is familiar with the general situation (such as "meal time", or "bath time", or "taking a walk"). He also clearly understands the meaning of nein and nicht, but he hates to hear it!
In the parenting guides, though, this appears to be accepted fact - at least, in those that I've read. They all agree that while babies may not yet reply or react the way one would like or expect, they definitely understand words and phrases that they hear regularly. :)

[naurring.livejournal.com]

I doubt there is any baby who likes 'nein'. :) It's so boring, you need to stop all those fun things you're doing!

Ah, I admit I haven't read any parenting guides yet. :) But good to see that it seems to be a given fact. :)