I\u2019ll admit, I struggle daily with impatience and frustration when taking care of my son Ryden. He has a BIG personality, and the energy of a thermonuclear bomb. Of course it\u2019s rewarding in countless ways as well \u2013 and when comical or interesting language drops from his mouth, I collect each word like it\u2019s a ruby or sapphire, and feel immensely rich.<\/p>\n
As a follow-up to part I<\/a>, this second batch of categorized kid talk presents some silliness (hopefully a part of every preschooler\u2019s day), code-switching between English and French, and persistent errors made on multiple linguistic levels.<\/p>\n (Age in the language samples is represented by the formatting convention, used in developmental psychology, of years;months \u2013 e.g. 2;11 means \u201c2 years and 11 months\u201d.)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Little kids love being silly, and love watching others (especially \u201cserious\u201d adults) act silly \u2013 and much of this silliness is enacted via language. Inevitably, a large part of the humor here is based on bodily excretions, a.k.a. \u201cpotty talk\u201d. In the U.S., potty training typically happens between the ages of two to three, so toddlers and preschoolers are becoming more aware of their bodies, how they get rid of waste, etc.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also lumped in here a couple examples where goofiness wasn\u2019t Ryden\u2019s intention, since they struck me as funny (see the first two below, outliers as well because non-potty-talk).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Code-switching<\/a><\/strong> is when a speaker switches between two or more languages within a single conversation, and it\u2019s quite common among bilingual and multilingual people. It can occur between whole sentences, smaller phrases, or even between individual words and morphemes. (You can read more about the interesting reasons for<\/a> and types of<\/a> code-switching on Wikipedia.)<\/p>\n French is my second language. I started learning at age 12 and have never stopped. I\u2019m not bilingual, but I do speak it rather fluently. I\u2019ve been speaking French to Ryden a little each day since he was born (ranging from 0-30% of my daily speech to him). We also read books together in French, and he occasionally watches French TV.<\/p>\n Although he seems to understand a good deal, Ryden doesn\u2019t say much unprompted en fran\u00e7ais<\/em> (the exposure to this second language is simply not enough, since neither his father nor anyone else around him speaks it). However, he does sometimes inject single French words into English sentences, or produce short French phrases on his own. As you\u2019ll see below, the single French words are almost always nouns<\/strong>. The nouns in a young child\u2019s vocabulary are often more tangible than verbs, adjectives, or function words like articles and conjunctions, and they comprise a large chunk of babies\u2019 first words in their native languages, so it makes sense to me that these would be the most approachable part of speech in a second language as well.<\/p>\n One aspect I haven\u2019t captured in the text samples is phonology \u2013 <\/strong>Ryden\u2019s pronunciation in French sounds near-native, which is pretty cool.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This category contains examples of some persistent language errors Ryden has made \u2013 he has said all of the below (except for the \u201csleep about\u201d example) multiple times. For several, he\u2019s repeated the incorrect forms even after being directly exposed to the correct ones (by me or Asher).[1]<\/a><\/p>\n Being a linguist with a young child is peculiar in that, probably in stark contrast to many non-linguist parents (from an American middle-class demographic at least), I relish my little one\u2019s mistakes, never rush to correct them, and secretly hope he won\u2019t outgrow them too quickly. I delight in his language mishaps since #1, I find them adorable; #2, I\u2019m entirely confident that he\u2019ll eventually learn the correct forms; and #3, errors provide some of the most helpful insights into the nature of how our brains acquire and process language.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve sub-grouped the examples below, with short explanations of each subcategory.<\/p>\n PHONETIC<\/strong> \/ LEXICAL<\/strong> \u2013 These are issues with both the phonemes<\/strong> (sound units) and lexical units <\/strong>(words).<\/p>\n (Walmonds <\/em>is an amazing word blend. <\/strong>See post here<\/a> on types of word formation, including blending.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n MORPHOLOGICAL <\/strong>\u2013 The sample below shows confusion over regular and irregular noun plurals.<\/p>\n (This is a perfectly classic example of overregularization <\/strong>\u2013 see post here<\/a> as it relates to past tense verbs. In the gooses<\/em> case, Ryden is overgeneralizing the regular plural noun suffix -s<\/em> to an irregular plural noun, geese<\/em>.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n SEMANTIC <\/strong>\u2013 In the below, an entirely different word with a related meaning is swapped in for the expected form.<\/p>\n (I love this one, because it\u2019s a mess-up in the semantic similarity <\/strong>space. Sleep <\/em>and dream<\/em> are related concepts, where one event (sleeping<\/em>) encapsulates the other event (dreaming<\/em>)\u2026and where the prerequisite for prototypical dreaming <\/em>is that one is sleeping<\/em>. Semantically related words supposedly cause similar neural activation patterns, so these types of mistakes make perfect sense.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Part III of this series will feature language snippets showcasing the start of verbal pretend-play, a budding temporal understanding, and a couple of other categories. So check back next month (the smookiest<\/em> time of the year)!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> This supports the argument made by cognitive psycholinguist Steven Pinker (and many others) that children do not learn their native languages based on explicit parental feedback. His oft-cited example is from another psycholinguist Martin Braine, who \u201conce tried for several weeks to stamp out one of his daughter\u2019s grammatical errors. Here is the result:<\/p>\n Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy.<\/p>\n Father: You mean, you want THE OTHER SPOON.<\/p>\n Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.<\/p>\n Father: Can you say \u201cthe other spoon\u201d?<\/p>\n Child: Other \u2026 one \u2026 spoon.<\/p>\n Father: Say \u2026 \u201cother.\u201d<\/p>\n Child: Other.<\/p>\n Father: \u201cSpoon.\u201d<\/p>\n Child: Spoon.<\/p>\n Father: \u201cOther \u2026 Spoon.\u201d<\/p>\n Child: Other \u2026 spoon. Now give me other one spoon?\u201d<\/p>\n (From p.281 in The Language Instinct<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\nBeing silly<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Language samples<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\n
Code-switching (English \u2013 French) <\/strong><\/h3>\n
Language samples<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Phonetic \/ lexical \/ morphological \/ semantic errors<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Language samples<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n