{"id":983,"date":"2025-05-17T18:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T22:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linguamonium.com\/?p=983"},"modified":"2025-05-17T18:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T22:42:11","slug":"audio-timelapse-3-years-of-child-language-in-7-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linguamonium.com\/?p=983","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAudio timelapse\u201d: 3 years of child language in 7 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, dear long-lost readers! So much for my ambitious 2024 goal of posting 2-4 times per month<\/a>. Half-way through last year my life went into overdrive, and it\u2019s been Linguamonium hiatus ever since. (This \u201coverdrive\u201d consisted of, in the space of a few months: getting a new job, moving twice within 30 days, buying our first house, getting pregnant, and finally, having our town wrecked by Hurricane Helene<\/a>.) Dealing with the aftermath of such pearls of fate left me, sadly, with little time for personal writing. Now, with a scant few days of maternity leave before dependent #2 arrives on the scene, here is my blog post offering\u2026<\/p>\n

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Introduction to the project<\/h2>\n

Since my son turned two and became capable of answering basic questions verbally, I\u2019ve embarked upon an informal, single-subject, longitudinal language acquisition project (see onesie<\/a>) \u2013 what I\u2019m calling \u201cRyden\u2019s audio timelapse\u201d.<\/p>\n

My basic goal was to capture audio recordings of little \u201cinterviews\u201d between me and my son Ryden, every 6 months (around his birthday each year and every half-year thereafter), starting at age 2 until he was at least 5 years old. I asked the same basic questions every time, and recorded my son\u2019s answers within the context of our interactions.<\/p>\n

The ultimate intention was to string these recordings together into \u201caudio timelapses\u201d (or \u201caudio-lapses\u201d) \u2013 an aural analogy to time-lapse photography.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t been a rigorous experiment in any sense, as I formulated no hypotheses, and had no exact scientific aim. I simply wanted to gather interesting material to study, thought the collection process would be fun, and figured my offspring might enjoy this unique record of his linguistic beginnings when grown. (His appreciation of me sharing this record far and wide across the internet is a less-sure bet, but beyond the intimate personal details Gen Z already shares globally on a daily basis, humans will probably have their entire consciousnesses uploaded to the cloud before my son gets his driver\u2019s license, so it\u2019s all good. Anyway, I digress.)<\/p>\n

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Some details and a first recording<\/h2>\n

I recorded audio only, as opposed to audio along with video, for a couple of reasons:<\/p>\n