oloriel | Overthinking Language Acquisition (Reply)

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.

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