M0th-b0nes - Hi :)

You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.

For those who don't understand the kid is screaming: "I'm here dad! Come here!" His father comes and asks him: "where is your mother?" The kid cries: "she died, she died."

Then the child explains that his foot is injured and his father tries to comfort him.

This is evil. The child literally met his dad at the hospital by accident, he watched his mom die and had to break the news to his father. What kind of power will save these children from this trauma? I know children in gaza are so strong and resilient, but children are children regardless.

Use your voice to end this genocide. Enough, CEASEFIRE NOW!

First Language Acquisition and Child Speech

First Language/Native Language Acqusition

Our native languages surround us from birth. Babies start acquiring them as soon as they start crying, and then cooing (usually around six 6 weeks). Babbling (“mamamama, dadadadada”) doesn’t generally start until around six 6 months. Language acquisition occurs fastest around the age of two 2 years, when a child learns most at once.

Most children pass language milestones at similar ages. However, some children pass some milestones earlier or later than others. Even so, they pass milestones in the same order as most other children.

Babbling (6-12 months)

More or less all babies babble, even Deaf babies (with some exceptions). In the earliest stages of babbling, babies will use sounds that aren’t part of their native languages’ systems, as initial babbling comes from the baby, not from the baby’s linguistic environment (the language(s) being spoken at home).

Babbling becomes specific to a hearing baby’s native language between six 6 and twelve 12 months. After this, a hearing baby will only use sounds that are found in their native language(s). At this stage, Deaf babies will often stop babbling. However, if their caregiver uses a sign language, a Deaf baby will often start babbling in that sign language, repeating particular signs where a hearing baby would use combinations of vowels and consonants.

At the babbling stage, a baby will say, “Mama,” “Dada,” “Baba,” and “Papa,” which is why words with these sounds are used for parents in lots of languages; they’re sounds that stick to a particular figure in a child’s life, often present in the earliest stages. Parents tend to reinforce this by referring to themselves in the third person when talking to the child, e.g. “Do you want Mama/Papa to read you a book?”, “Dada’s taking you to the park this afternoon.”

Holophrastic/One‑Word Phase (12‑18 months)

In the holophrastic phase, a child will begin to speak in individual words. At this stage, these words are used in the places of whole phrases (holo‑=whole, ‑phrastic=phrase), and their meanings can vary with context, as well as from child to child.

“Milk” may really mean “I like milk,” but it may also mean “I want milk,” or “I don’t want milk,” or “Have some milk.” You really need to know the child and the context well in order to understand properly.

At this stage, children may also overextend the meaning of a word, so that “milk” refers to all liquid. Meaning may also be underextended, so that “man” only refers to the child’s father, and “dog” only refers to the family dog; other dogs aren’t called “dog”, and other men aren’t “man”.

A child may also pronounce words differently in the holophrastic phase, contracting consonantal clusters like “pl” [pl] into “p” [p] or “l” [l] to make “plum” into “pum” or “lum”.

Combining the different pronunciation heard in the holophrastic speech with the overextension/underextension of meaning, and the use of single words in place of phrases, “lum” might be a child’s way of saying, “I would like a plum” (whole‑phrase speech and consonant contraction) or even “Where is the fruit bowl?” if the child overextends “lum” to mean all fruit, not just plums.

Two‑Word Stage (18‑24 months)

The two‑word stage is present in the acquisition of more or less all first languages. This stage is similar across different languages, and all children will use the right syntax (word order) for their native language.

Japanese and Korean word order is Object‑Verb (“store go”), and English word order is Verb‑Object (“go store”). Children acquiring their first languages get syntax right automatically, and don’t have to sit down and learn it like in a second‑language lesson. They observe speakers around them, and mimic their syntax. Grammar is usually missing at this stage, but word order is usually accurate.

At this stage, auxiliary words (such as “will” in “I will go”, “to” in “go to playgroup”, and “can” in “can I go?”) are omitted. So are articles (“the”, “a/an”, etc.) and pronouns (“she”, “him”, “their”, “your”, “we”). Therefore, an English‑speaking child between 18 and 24 months will say “go store” rather than “I will go to the store”.

Semantics at this age are very simple. A child at the two‑word stage won’t have a large vocabulary, so will call all shades of blue “blue”, rather than specifying “turquoise” or “cerulean” etc. They might not distinguish between “cat” and “kitten”, “walk” and “crawl”.

Telegraphic/Multiword Stage (24‑30 months)

This stage is also called the telegraphic stage because children speak as if they’re writing a telegram. This is because 24‑30 month‑old children don’t use auxiliaries. They say things like, “I want go park” when they mean, “I want to go to the park”. Little grammatical words are missing, like they are in a telegram. Only words that carry real meaning are used; sentences can still be understood, but an adult will think of them as having gaps.

Gradually, a child at this stage will start adding functional words, such as pronouns, as well as inflections (for the ends of words), like “‑ing” and “‑ed”, so that “Holly walk” becomes “Holly walked” and “Joey swim” becomes “Joey swimming” (to mean “Joey is swimming”).

Complex sentences (30+ months)

Complex sentences have two clauses, e.g. “I know that she likes toffee” and “This is the bus which broke down yesterday”. Children will start to produce these sentences from about 30 months.

Questions and negative statements are grammatically complicated, so many children still struggle with them at this age. “Where has she gone?” requires the inversion of “she has” as seen in “she has gone.” “I don’t like peas” requires the auxiliary “do”, which the positive “I like peas” doesn’t. Most grammatical structures like this will be in place by the time a child reaches three 3 years, so having a child older than that speak in telegraph or holophrase will seem odd to a reader unless there’s a reason for it, explained in the story. Most children won’t speak in telegraphs past 30 months.

At this stage, some children will still have trouble with irregular past tenses, saying “I swimmed” instead of “I swam”, and “I runned” instead of “I ran”. However, they’re not likely to confuse “I swim” with “he swims” and say “I swims” or “he swim” at the complex sentence stage.

Children hypothesise rules to produce words and sentences that they could never have heard. They might overregularise language, hearing “happy/unhappy” and assuming they can also say “sad/unsad”, or “fat/unfat”. A child might hear “can you butter my bread?” and produce “can you jam my bread?”, because they think that “jam” can be a verb in this context, as “butter” can.

Correcting Grammar

Linguistic input has an important role in first language acquisition, but direct teaching or covert correction by adults is generally fruitless unless the child is cognitively ready to understand what’s being said to them. You can’t teach a two-year-old how to make questions or relative clauses, because they’re not old enough to understand your corrections.

For @sins-virtues and @givethispromptatry From university lecture notes, organised by Hilary Hale, AKA @thorlokibrother.

The ceasefire agreement was reached and joy is floating among the Palestinian people

futbol heritage

How can you talk about anything else today. She was six. Millions heard her cries begging to be saved. We heard her older cousin be slaughtered, heard the baby pull the phone from her cousin's dead hands, heard her cry and beg to be saved, to be allowed to live, to be pardoned for a crime no one in that fucking car committed. The occupation knew she was there, knew she was the only one alive in that pile of bodies, and they killed her anyway. They knew, they knew, they knew. They allowed paramedics to approach her, and then bombed them just mere meters away from her, then killed her. The occupation allowed them to believe she could be saved and then killed all of them moments away from her rescue. She was in a car fleeing the evacuation zone along the correct route as instructed. The ambulance waited three hours, three hours of her being trapped between the rotting bodies of her dead family, for the occupation's permission to save her, and when they gave it, the occupation killed them anyway. What else is there to say. How can you quantify that level of cruelty. How many more worse things have happened that we don't have a recording of? How much evil has the zionist occupation regime been allowed to get away with in the interest of western imperialism? How many six year old girls who love bratz, who have a bluey plush, who want to grow up to be doctors or ballerinas or astronauts, have been sniped from this earth? Their bodies desecrated, left to bloat and be eaten by animals and have their graves bulldozed and their organs taken? At least ten fucking thousand. At least.