Hi there! Because it’s been months already since the last post, I’ll jump in without preamble – here’s recording #5, the last of my “Ryden audio-lapse” project. (Take a look & listen at the first, second, and third posts if you missed them!) This final recording contains conversations about my son’s favorite toys and books.
You may want to adjust your volume throughout the recording, as it varies, along with the audio quality, between each half-year segment.
And finally, since there’s no more opportunity for procrastination, I’d like to share some of my observations on the multi-year venture:
- Before beginning this experiment, I had anticipated changes on many linguistic levels: in pronunciation (phonology), in vocabulary (lexicon), in word and sentence structure (morphology, syntax) – all of these growing more “adult-like” over time. I had also expected developments in Ryden’s cognitive abilities, like his capacity to understand questions, answer more thoroughly, and think more abstractly as he learned more about the world. I had NOT thought much about one important facet involving pragmatics: attention. As my son grew, he became more attentive to my questions, more attuned to conversational expectations, and not as distracted by things around him.
- I’d be remiss not to mention Gricean Maxims again here. I first outlined them in the post “Hot Skull”. Basically, humans learn how to communicate cooperatively – not saying too much or too little, being clear and relevant, being truthful… Even when people flout these maxims (which of course happens all the time), they’re usually still very aware of such communicative expectations. But itty bitty children need to learn all of these nuances. It’s a smaller piece of more general theory of mind acquisition, where young humans learn that others’ interior worlds – others’ thoughts, needs, and wants – differ from their own. From 2 to 5 years old, Ryden became more and more attuned to my expectations when I questioned him, and responded accordingly.
- On a related note: This project highlighted for me just how much little kids live in the present, their attention on the HERE and NOW. This mode of being contrasted starkly with mine (a typical adult, always mired in the past or hurtling into the future). It was clearly a challenge for Ryden (although diminishing slightly as he got older) to consider questions about things spatially or temporally distant.
- I did come to the realization early on (maybe around my son’s 2.5 years) that it helped to ask about things when he had relevant toys / books / images in front of him. By 3.5 or 4 years, he didn’t need those references as much, and could rattle off lists of numbers or colors in response to my inquiries. This may have been a combo of memorization, early schooling, and/or his familiarity with my questions at that point – instead of a developing ability to think abstractly – but who knows.
- Listening to the recordings, it has been interesting to hear the changes in my voice and in my way of talking to Ryden – another aspect I surprisingly hadn’t much considered before the project’s start.
- In sociolinguistics, caregiver language directed toward babies is called “motherese”, or more recently, “parentese” or “child-directed speech”. (This is a fascinating topic, and one I’ve wanted to write about for a long time.)
- The speech style is characterized by a slower tempo, higher pitch, elongated vowels, simple words, lots of repetition, and exaggerated intonation. The extent of parentese varies cross-culturally, but it is present across relatively different cultures worldwide.
- My parentese was really obvious in the first couple of years, when Ryden was two and three, and then gave way to a more “standard” way of speaking by the time he turned four. Despite being a linguist, and even having read widely about this phenomenon, the transformation was natural and pretty unconscious.
- In sociolinguistics, caregiver language directed toward babies is called “motherese”, or more recently, “parentese” or “child-directed speech”. (This is a fascinating topic, and one I’ve wanted to write about for a long time.)
- Also regarding my side of the interactions: in hindsight, it feels like I was a little heavy-handed. I prompted Ryden for specific answers to questions that could have been more open-ended – for example, what foods he liked to eat. (If he didn’t mention “bananas”, I’d prompt him for that response until he gave it. He did love bananas and ate them every day, but that wasn’t the point.)
- A few notes about French in the recordings:
- Questions in French generally required more prompting from me to start Ryden off. For example, numbers (I would start un, deux… and then he’d pick it up from there), and colors (I’d say jaune or vert etc. to get him thinking en français). I also reinforced his answers more than I did in English, repeating what he said after each word or two. Since French is our second, “weaker” language, the extra support seems logical.
- I called out the language change explicitly too – “now en français?” – which made our code-switching somewhat forced. It did, however, probably help him develop metalinguistic awareness.
- I wish I had questioned Ryden in French more consistently across the ages and question types – only a few ages and questions are represented.
- For the numbers recording, it was cool to observe a bit of overregularization, here with cardinal numbers.
- While counting, my son said “ten-teen” instead of “twenty”, and “twenty-ten” instead of “thirty”. His brain had recognized a couple of patterns (with -teen and twenty- ), and naturally over-extended them…creating cute errors in the process.
- I would love to be able to make a generalization or two about child language acquisition from this project. Alas, generalizing is basically impossible (except maybe where phenomena reinforce existing theories), since the sample size is literally a single individual.
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- Now that I have a second child, I plan to conduct the same “research” with him. Two is barely better than one in terms of sample size, but at least it’ll be fun to compare.
- To my knowledge (granted, I don’t have a formal background in this area, and have not searched very hard), there are no similar longitudinal studies that involve a large cohort – like dozens or hundreds of children. If I was living my ideal life, I would run just such an experiment. 😊
My son Ryden, at ages 2, 3, 4, and 5 (left to right)
