Remember The 6 Year Old Girl Who Was Surrounded By Israeli Tanks And The Red Crescent Couldn't Reach

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 fourth little pig built his house out of wolf skulls. It wasn’t very sturdy, but it sent a message.

Further Notes on Writing Signed Language

So I had a good think about this, based off of what I have written lately. As I go further into my novel, do even more research into different types of sign, and start on the arc that is written solely from the POV of my deaf character, I’ve begun to realize some other differences between signed and spoken dialogue.

For one thing, punctuation doesn’t apply in the same way. There is punctuation in sign language, but as I’ve talked about before, it is mostly facial; therefore, you describe it as a part of the dialogue tags. So then, what do about the commas, colons and semi-colons? In this case, the n-dash is your friend! The aforementioned punctuation marks indicate changes in tone, alterations of pace and pauses. Therefore, they can be replaced with an  n-dash, like so

“You and I – I don’t think we can continue.”

And fingerspelled words would be written as single letters, hyphenated into a word:

”You and I - going to L-O-N-D-O-N.”

For another, the syntax of your translated signed dialogue is subtly different. One sign can ususally mean several different words and filler words are absent. If someone were to say “really big.” in sign, they might just make the sign for “big” and super over-exaggerate.

So, verbal dialogue version:

“It was really, really big!” Lottie jumped and down in excitement, her eyes shining. 

And the signed dialogue version:

“The dog was huge!” Lottie flung out her hands into the word, making it larger than it needed to be, bouncing on her heels.

Keeping in mind that large, big, huge, bountiful (and other connected synonyms) are all the same sign.

I don’t like to write signed language in the syntax that it would be signed in (Name, yours, what instead of “what is your name”). Not only is this confusing for non-signing readers, but it also reads as childish or overly-simplistic for readers who don’t understand sign, which reinforces the harmful stereotype of deaf people being stupid/infantilisation of deaf people. It is impossible to truly do signed language justice in writing, because it’s a language made for hands, bodies and faces.

This all comes together to mean that the sentence structure of dialogue in sign will be different. You would use less contractions (isn’t, you’re, might’ve etc), fewer modifiers and shorter chunks of dialogue with the description of the sign in between.

If it reads differently or feels strange, that’s okay: signed language is different to verbal language and so they won’t sound the same as one another in writing. They’re more like cousins or step-siblings than part of the same direct family group. You’re utilizing different descriptors and tools.

Hopefully, this also answers the repeated issue of differentiation, which has come up time and time again from various people. Best of luck to you all with your writing x

British Lads Hit Each Other With Chair

okay i'm locking these in early i know what's gonna happen i'm calling it now

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

Holding up snarky signs doesn't seem to be working.

For me, it isn't about whether this action is appropriate or not. It's about how this kind of action is inevitable.

I'm going to let Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explain in a quote no one seems to post during his annual holiday.

"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?"

If you only speak up about a supercharger catching fire and ignore the unheard, you are prioritizing a thing over people.

“Scientists know that rats like to have their bellies tickled, so they used that as basis for testing happiness in rats. They found out that the ears of rats undergoing tickling became droopier and pinker - subtle signs of being relaxed and happy“

(via)