Here are things that Vidar has said.
Mummy, I think we should be efficient and watch TV now.
Yes, even if I am bipedal, I am really quite stable.
What is 4 plus 4? (He thinks six, but I tell him it is 8). Oh, but then 8 is much smaller than I thought it was. I thought it was up here (stretches arm up), but now I know it is really just here (arm in some middle position).
Friday 19 June 2015
Monday 15 June 2015
Reverse Stuttering
So the other thing that Vidar is doing a lot which is interesting from a phonological perspective, is what I call Reverse Stuttering.
I gather that actual stuttering is a tie-up in the motor planning part of speech production, so the speaker repeats the first segment or syllable. Vidar seems to be more of a speak-before-you-think-too-much-about-it kind of child. Sometimes he even gets going and I can tell he doesn't know what he is going to say he just wants to keep the conversation going. However, he gets to the end of the sentence, and before going on to the next utterance he repeats the last segment as a kind of `filler' or uhm or ahm before he continues.
Like this:
Mummy when we get home m m m, can I play with the ipad?
The coda segment can be anything, even things that you wouldn't think would be pronounceable on their own like `ng' and `ks' .
He seems to do it in all his languages. I can't tell whether he is rethinking his previous utterance, or just doing some kind of perseveration as a filler strategy. Weird.
I am writing all of these things down now so because I think the next 6 months will bring some big changes and I don't want to forget.
I gather that actual stuttering is a tie-up in the motor planning part of speech production, so the speaker repeats the first segment or syllable. Vidar seems to be more of a speak-before-you-think-too-much-about-it kind of child. Sometimes he even gets going and I can tell he doesn't know what he is going to say he just wants to keep the conversation going. However, he gets to the end of the sentence, and before going on to the next utterance he repeats the last segment as a kind of `filler' or uhm or ahm before he continues.
Like this:
Mummy when we get home m m m, can I play with the ipad?
The coda segment can be anything, even things that you wouldn't think would be pronounceable on their own like `ng' and `ks' .
He seems to do it in all his languages. I can't tell whether he is rethinking his previous utterance, or just doing some kind of perseveration as a filler strategy. Weird.
I am writing all of these things down now so because I think the next 6 months will bring some big changes and I don't want to forget.
Monday 8 June 2015
5 years old
Need to write some things down before I forget them. We will spend the next five months in Edinburgh starting in August and he will be going to school, so I think things will change pretty rapidly.
The summer after he was four, I held his tongue down a couple of times and taught him how to say /k/ and /g/. It took him a month to sort it all out, but he got it.
However, he still cannot say /r/ or /l/. They both come out as /y/ or /w/ depending on the context. (This is in both languages).
At 5 years old, he is still doing some pretty quirky things with respect to grammar.
After a good two years of having do-support for past tense even in positive affirmative utterances, he has finally started using -ed.
i.e. from ``I did break it´´ to ``I breaked it.´´
He has the perfect ending -en and is massively overgeneralizing it.
``I have breaken it.´´
any and ever seem to be emphatic versions of none and never. (He has been doing this a long time, and shows no sign of changing).
Another thing he has been doing for a long time in the face of much evidence to the contrary, is the use of why to mean because.
``Why did you do that, Vidar?´´ ``That´s why I was tired.´´
He seems to be equally balanced in the three languages, though, and is extremely consistent with speaking English to me. He even enjoys and insists on translating Swedish and Barnehagespråk for me, and on translating English for Björn.
Swedish and Norwegian are well distinguished, phonologically, grammatically and lexically.
He does not like to code switch. He would rather explain things to me in a roundabout way in English than use the Swedish word.
Likes to talk. Keeps up a running commentary when he is playing by himself. Language of play is usually English. My impression is that his Swedish is grammatically a bit more sound, but English is a heart-language.
He can count properly and do simple additions and subtractions. He can recognise complex numbers up to about 40 in their written forms.
He can read slowly, many words of Swedish. Not so good on the English yet though.
He does 100 piece puzzles by himself.
He builds lego things mostly by himself by reading the instruction books.
Still likes dinosaurs.
Likes superheroes. Batman, Spiderman.
Plays lots of fantasy symbolic role playing games with his lego figures and vehicles. This is when he is playing on his own. Lots of talking, lots of flying, lots of shooting.
Just introduced him to Star Wars. We watched the first two movies together the other weekend. He didn't understand everything and was a little bit scared, but it engaged him.
Still completely uninterested in clothing or his appearance.
Seems to have his first crush--- a little girl of six years called Adele.
The summer after he was four, I held his tongue down a couple of times and taught him how to say /k/ and /g/. It took him a month to sort it all out, but he got it.
However, he still cannot say /r/ or /l/. They both come out as /y/ or /w/ depending on the context. (This is in both languages).
At 5 years old, he is still doing some pretty quirky things with respect to grammar.
After a good two years of having do-support for past tense even in positive affirmative utterances, he has finally started using -ed.
i.e. from ``I did break it´´ to ``I breaked it.´´
He has the perfect ending -en and is massively overgeneralizing it.
``I have breaken it.´´
any and ever seem to be emphatic versions of none and never. (He has been doing this a long time, and shows no sign of changing).
Another thing he has been doing for a long time in the face of much evidence to the contrary, is the use of why to mean because.
``Why did you do that, Vidar?´´ ``That´s why I was tired.´´
He seems to be equally balanced in the three languages, though, and is extremely consistent with speaking English to me. He even enjoys and insists on translating Swedish and Barnehagespråk for me, and on translating English for Björn.
Swedish and Norwegian are well distinguished, phonologically, grammatically and lexically.
He does not like to code switch. He would rather explain things to me in a roundabout way in English than use the Swedish word.
Likes to talk. Keeps up a running commentary when he is playing by himself. Language of play is usually English. My impression is that his Swedish is grammatically a bit more sound, but English is a heart-language.
He can count properly and do simple additions and subtractions. He can recognise complex numbers up to about 40 in their written forms.
He can read slowly, many words of Swedish. Not so good on the English yet though.
He does 100 piece puzzles by himself.
He builds lego things mostly by himself by reading the instruction books.
Still likes dinosaurs.
Likes superheroes. Batman, Spiderman.
Plays lots of fantasy symbolic role playing games with his lego figures and vehicles. This is when he is playing on his own. Lots of talking, lots of flying, lots of shooting.
Just introduced him to Star Wars. We watched the first two movies together the other weekend. He didn't understand everything and was a little bit scared, but it engaged him.
Still completely uninterested in clothing or his appearance.
Seems to have his first crush--- a little girl of six years called Adele.
Friday 31 May 2013
Things Move So Fast!
Vidar is really beginning to put in past tense now. At first he had the progressive participle, untensed verbs, and also modals (must, can and will), but now he also has the past tense and some instances of do-support coming in with negation.
His Swedish past tenses came in first, and are more consistent. His irregular past tenses are not very visible in Swedish though with lots of clear overgeneralization.
In English, they are just beginning to come in in spontaneous speech, both regular and irregular. No perfect tense yet. Still no consistent inversion in Wh-questions, at least no do-support for inversion purposes that I have heard yet.
However, he is begining to do V2 in two clear kinds of context in English (i) after temporal and framing adverbials (ii) quotative inversion (even with pronouns!)
Some examples:
Now shall we watch tv.
No said I
hello said you.
Pronominal indexical reference is now pretty solid.
He asks `what you doing?' and `where are we now?' and `What called that?' but he doesn't ask any Why questions. He however does happily answer why/questions, and he likes to use the word `because'.
He has relative clauses but no CP complementation so far. He says 'I don´t know', but I haven't heard him use the verb 'think' yet. I need to check whether he has object relatives as well as subject relatives, but I think so.
He still can't pronounce \k\ and \g\.
His fantasy world has become extremely rich and active. He is always pretending this and pretending that. You are a this mamma, and I am a that. Taking mundane objects on the beach and pretending they are bowls of porridge or blueberries or other things he is making. He goes into the upstairs bathroom and closes the sliding door and says we are on a train going to various places, sometimes Trinidad, sometimes Öland.
He likes to say maybe, and speculate about reasons for things.
When he sees something he likes to comment right away `That was a tractor, mamma´. He generally likes to keep up a running commentary on what he observes. He often says things more than once and often in both languages one after the other, actively translating. The other day, hotdog came out as 'warm hund' in the Swedish version.
If he doesn´t want to do something he usually says 'I will not do that´, using the auxiliary 'will´, also when he agrees to a suggestion he sometimes says 'yes, we must DO that. we must do that NOW´, or 'yes, I WILL do that´. but I have noticed that when he wants some Thing, he does not use 'will' at all, but just the present tense of 'have': 'I have that one'.
We are reading more advanced poems now than just nursery rhymes. He knows all the nursery rhymes by heart but some of it is just sound copying, especially where there are words he doesn´t know.
He likes poems when we are going to bed.
We make up funny language games and nonsense words for different kinds of monsters. He finds language jokes very funny. Like when you start with one nursery rhyme and mix it in with another.
Or when you make silly rhymes. He also says, but I think its just a straight copy from me, 'That was funny' , when there is something a little odd or amusing that happens.
He loves Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He always asks the name of songs he likes when they are playing on the stereo. The other day, Björn said it was a band called Ved, and he said 'That´s a funny word'. I found that level of metalinguistic comment quite striking/interesting. I wonder if bilinguals do that more than monolinguals.
Ok, that is all I can think of for now.
His Swedish past tenses came in first, and are more consistent. His irregular past tenses are not very visible in Swedish though with lots of clear overgeneralization.
In English, they are just beginning to come in in spontaneous speech, both regular and irregular. No perfect tense yet. Still no consistent inversion in Wh-questions, at least no do-support for inversion purposes that I have heard yet.
However, he is begining to do V2 in two clear kinds of context in English (i) after temporal and framing adverbials (ii) quotative inversion (even with pronouns!)
Some examples:
Now shall we watch tv.
No said I
hello said you.
Pronominal indexical reference is now pretty solid.
He asks `what you doing?' and `where are we now?' and `What called that?' but he doesn't ask any Why questions. He however does happily answer why/questions, and he likes to use the word `because'.
He has relative clauses but no CP complementation so far. He says 'I don´t know', but I haven't heard him use the verb 'think' yet. I need to check whether he has object relatives as well as subject relatives, but I think so.
He still can't pronounce \k\ and \g\.
His fantasy world has become extremely rich and active. He is always pretending this and pretending that. You are a this mamma, and I am a that. Taking mundane objects on the beach and pretending they are bowls of porridge or blueberries or other things he is making. He goes into the upstairs bathroom and closes the sliding door and says we are on a train going to various places, sometimes Trinidad, sometimes Öland.
He likes to say maybe, and speculate about reasons for things.
When he sees something he likes to comment right away `That was a tractor, mamma´. He generally likes to keep up a running commentary on what he observes. He often says things more than once and often in both languages one after the other, actively translating. The other day, hotdog came out as 'warm hund' in the Swedish version.
If he doesn´t want to do something he usually says 'I will not do that´, using the auxiliary 'will´, also when he agrees to a suggestion he sometimes says 'yes, we must DO that. we must do that NOW´, or 'yes, I WILL do that´. but I have noticed that when he wants some Thing, he does not use 'will' at all, but just the present tense of 'have': 'I have that one'.
We are reading more advanced poems now than just nursery rhymes. He knows all the nursery rhymes by heart but some of it is just sound copying, especially where there are words he doesn´t know.
He likes poems when we are going to bed.
We make up funny language games and nonsense words for different kinds of monsters. He finds language jokes very funny. Like when you start with one nursery rhyme and mix it in with another.
Or when you make silly rhymes. He also says, but I think its just a straight copy from me, 'That was funny' , when there is something a little odd or amusing that happens.
He loves Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He always asks the name of songs he likes when they are playing on the stereo. The other day, Björn said it was a band called Ved, and he said 'That´s a funny word'. I found that level of metalinguistic comment quite striking/interesting. I wonder if bilinguals do that more than monolinguals.
Ok, that is all I can think of for now.
Monday 8 April 2013
Which Things are Easy and Which Things are Hard
It has been a long time since I posted an update about Vidar's language skills. I have to hurry up and write this down because I think its all about to change again.
The past 2 months have been great for Vidar's English. He speaks to me in English most of the time now, and it is really catching up with the Swedish. Both languages have some interestingly consistent features, but I describe them here for English since I am most sure about that:
No past tense, no inversion in questions, no do-support, unsupported negation not preceding verb (Not DO that, mamma).
Yes modals (must, can, will)! Also a progressive in place (sometimes with and sometimes without helping auxiliary). But no perfects, and obviously no passives.
Instead of just saying yes, he often likes to repeat the sentence with the verb heavily stressed.
yes, I is tired.
yes, we must do that. We must do that now.
He is beginning to use pronouns more consistently for himself, and getting them right, instead of just referring to himself by Vidar. Not much agreement on the verb. Past tense irregular verbs only when repeating what I have said back to me. No spontaneous past tenses. He has begun to produce a smattering of regular past tenses spontaneously in Swedish, but its really just beginning there too.
He has some errors that he carries over to both languages:
so lots of cars
så masse bilar
He keeps trying to translate from one language to the other, often repeating things once in each language. Sometimes the translation is a little wrong, but it is usually pretty good. One clear mistranslation from Swedish into English is maybe that, mamma instead of maybe so. which seems like a literal translation from the Swedish/Norwegian.
He seems to understand quantifiers. I said to him, of a particular jigsaw puzzle that we were doing, that 'We don´t have all the pieces´, and he answered but SOME of them, mamma.
On the other hand, his pronunciation is not clearly improving. He still cannot say /k/ or /g/, and he uses /y/ for all the liquids.
I was away from him for some days at a conference, and when I finally showed up again I came towards him and he wasn´t sure how to react and was looking at me a little shyly. He said There are lots of cars here. Which apparently was the first English he had uttered in 3 days. So he didn´t miss me, he missed English. :)
Some cute things:
Oh my dod. What a mess. (The latter he must get from Dr Seuss)
I DOIN someting, mamma
How man DO this? (How does one do this?) The latter is very common when he gets stuck with something.
He is actually asking a lot of questions (in both languages). (Where are we now? What you doing? What sounding like that? What call that? (What is that called. He says Va heter den a lot in Swedish, but I only hear him try it once in English and he surprisingly inverted the main verb, so I think he was just calquing from Swedish. It took me a while to understand what he was saying since he can´t say /k/, but anyway he has not tried it again).)
He has relative clauses, or at least comparisons: som i X /as in X, like X which he likes to use a lot. He is always reminding you when he saw or heard a similar thing.
He is beginning to understand about time. He knows what tomorrow is, and he can tell you who he met and what he did `yesterday´. He likes to use now and not now a lot, and has started to say soon, which he uses correctly.
He likes to repeat the verb to give a long duration to the action: I want to play and play and play. Vidar must wait and wait and wait. etc.
Ok, that´s enough for now. But I just felt today that he was on the brink of big changes again, so I may be blogging about it again soon.
It has been a long time since I posted an update about Vidar's language skills. I have to hurry up and write this down because I think its all about to change again.
The past 2 months have been great for Vidar's English. He speaks to me in English most of the time now, and it is really catching up with the Swedish. Both languages have some interestingly consistent features, but I describe them here for English since I am most sure about that:
No past tense, no inversion in questions, no do-support, unsupported negation not preceding verb (Not DO that, mamma).
Yes modals (must, can, will)! Also a progressive in place (sometimes with and sometimes without helping auxiliary). But no perfects, and obviously no passives.
Instead of just saying yes, he often likes to repeat the sentence with the verb heavily stressed.
yes, I is tired.
yes, we must do that. We must do that now.
He is beginning to use pronouns more consistently for himself, and getting them right, instead of just referring to himself by Vidar. Not much agreement on the verb. Past tense irregular verbs only when repeating what I have said back to me. No spontaneous past tenses. He has begun to produce a smattering of regular past tenses spontaneously in Swedish, but its really just beginning there too.
He has some errors that he carries over to both languages:
so lots of cars
så masse bilar
He keeps trying to translate from one language to the other, often repeating things once in each language. Sometimes the translation is a little wrong, but it is usually pretty good. One clear mistranslation from Swedish into English is maybe that, mamma instead of maybe so. which seems like a literal translation from the Swedish/Norwegian.
He seems to understand quantifiers. I said to him, of a particular jigsaw puzzle that we were doing, that 'We don´t have all the pieces´, and he answered but SOME of them, mamma.
On the other hand, his pronunciation is not clearly improving. He still cannot say /k/ or /g/, and he uses /y/ for all the liquids.
I was away from him for some days at a conference, and when I finally showed up again I came towards him and he wasn´t sure how to react and was looking at me a little shyly. He said There are lots of cars here. Which apparently was the first English he had uttered in 3 days. So he didn´t miss me, he missed English. :)
Some cute things:
Oh my dod. What a mess. (The latter he must get from Dr Seuss)
I DOIN someting, mamma
How man DO this? (How does one do this?) The latter is very common when he gets stuck with something.
He is actually asking a lot of questions (in both languages). (Where are we now? What you doing? What sounding like that? What call that? (What is that called. He says Va heter den a lot in Swedish, but I only hear him try it once in English and he surprisingly inverted the main verb, so I think he was just calquing from Swedish. It took me a while to understand what he was saying since he can´t say /k/, but anyway he has not tried it again).)
He has relative clauses, or at least comparisons: som i X /as in X, like X which he likes to use a lot. He is always reminding you when he saw or heard a similar thing.
He is beginning to understand about time. He knows what tomorrow is, and he can tell you who he met and what he did `yesterday´. He likes to use now and not now a lot, and has started to say soon, which he uses correctly.
He likes to repeat the verb to give a long duration to the action: I want to play and play and play. Vidar must wait and wait and wait. etc.
Ok, that´s enough for now. But I just felt today that he was on the brink of big changes again, so I may be blogging about it again soon.
Thursday 10 January 2013
The New Year
In the time between my last language log for Vidar and this post, a lot of things have happened that I should have been keeping more minute track of. Unfortunately, we also moved house, which took up a lot of time, and had Christmas guests, which made quiet blogging impossible. Let's see if I can describe the state of his language at the moment, firstly in impressionistic terms.
He seems to be in an extremely experimental phase. We have lots of full sentences now, not just two words. The sentences are in English or Swedish, and quite often also mixed. No apparent progress on pronouncing /k/ or /g/ or distinguishing between /l/, /r/ and /y/. However, the syntax and vocabulary are greatly expanded. He still mimics utterances, but he more often repeats the content back to me, in his own words. Sometimes he will repeat it back in Swedish if I said it in English. For example, I'll say ``Mamma, pappa and Vidar had a big party last night.'', and he will say `Ja, en veldig stor fest!'' But sometimes he uses negation to show that he has understood and is contributing to the conversation: I say ``that was very very delicious'' and he says ``yes. ees NOT very very yucky''.
He knows lots of opposites, so this is a useable strategy in many contexts. good-bad; rett - fel; big-small. He is also a bit of a drama queen and likes to repeat the word `very' (twice or more) in both languages (jätte or veldigt in Swedish, very in English).
When you talk to him and tell him stuff that is going on, he likes to contribute to the conversation. You can seem him thinking/casting about for something to say.
He likes to analogize. He often volunteers the information that something is like another thing. Like with the cushion in the cafe: "Det ser ut som en torte" (It looks like a cake). But more commonly "Det er som en X" (It is like an X), where X is snake or ball or ghost or something he is interested in. In general, he does a lot of make-believe playing. He also spends hours with his toy train that moves excruciatingly slowly on its wooden tracks by means of a battery. We go through about one battery a day.
He is extremely good at recognizing and naming letters now, in both English and Swedish. If he tries to recite the alphabet he sometimes makes mistakes, but if you ask him to look for a particular letter or name a particular letter then he always gets it right, for all letters now in both languages. He can also name a slew of words that `begin´with that letter if you ask him (in both languages). He picks out letters in texts and points them out. He has alphabet puzzles and alphabet letters to play with on a magnetic board. This is one of his favourite toys. His favourite letter at the moment is Ö. Which he knows is an O with two dots. He pronounces it in an exaggerated fashion, picks exemplars out of his alphabet toy box and throws them around gleefully, or sticks them on to things, and shows them to perfect strangers. He treats them like most other kids treat their favourite dolls or animals (he does not play with the latter very much, except to occasionally throw them around). His hand-eye coordination is still not good enough to draw anything better than a curve vs. a straightish line, but he knows, if you ask him, that its easy to draw an O because it is "jätte jätte rundt" (very very round). He even tried, and managed to make a decent one once. He can count things, and gets it right consistently up to about five. But if he has to recite the numbers he uses the standard rhymes in Swedish or English and sometimes gets it wrong. With actual counting up to five, he doesn´t get it wrong. He still does not consistently recognise the written numbers though.
Speaking of rhymes, he loves the nursery rhyme book, and has started to follow along when I read. He seems to remember the sound of everything, and can do a recognisable job of burbling along even to long poems like the Walrus and the Carpenter. But it is clear that he only knows some of the bits as words, for the rest, he just makes some kind of sound approximation.
He plays turn taking games, like picture Bingo and the measles game where you pick up cards that either give you or take away certain numbers of spots. He is quite ok at this game, except the fact that he still does not realise that it is good to have fewer spots not more spots if you want to win the game.
Phonologically, he is doing a weird thing that started a few weeks ago. If a sentence he utters ends in a consonant, he will often pause and then finish up with a little CV syllable at the end which is the last consonant of his last word, plus a schwa. So "Vil ha den .....NUH" or, "Ees a bus .... SUH" , or even " No ..... WUH" It´s like comic Italian except for the long pause. He also actually says it quite quietly, as if to himself.
Mostly his Scandinavian seems very Swedish and no strong signs of Norwegian yet. But we do not know how he speaks when he is at the nursery.
Question formation. He has Where questions in Swedish very commonly, with inversion. I have not heard them in English yet, at least not uttered spontaneously. I also haven´t heard any yes-no questions, although he understands them. He has a subject who question which might be a whole memorized utterance "Vem bor dar inne? " (Who is living/hiding in there). So so far none of these questions have word orders that deviate from the order possible in an assertion. I will listen out for when I hear the first one.
He has copulas with adjectives and have with possession, but he seems to overuse the verb `have´ for descriptions where the predicate is a noun. Vidar ha mat/Vidar er ferdig nu (Vidar wants to have food/Vidar is finished now) but Vidar ha spøke (Vidar is a ghost).
He still refers to himself by name. And he is still bad at the you/me distinction. We are trying to use more pronouns to him now, but old habits die hard.
Ok. That´s it for now. More in the next post if I realise I have forgotten something important.
He seems to be in an extremely experimental phase. We have lots of full sentences now, not just two words. The sentences are in English or Swedish, and quite often also mixed. No apparent progress on pronouncing /k/ or /g/ or distinguishing between /l/, /r/ and /y/. However, the syntax and vocabulary are greatly expanded. He still mimics utterances, but he more often repeats the content back to me, in his own words. Sometimes he will repeat it back in Swedish if I said it in English. For example, I'll say ``Mamma, pappa and Vidar had a big party last night.'', and he will say `Ja, en veldig stor fest!'' But sometimes he uses negation to show that he has understood and is contributing to the conversation: I say ``that was very very delicious'' and he says ``yes. ees NOT very very yucky''.
He knows lots of opposites, so this is a useable strategy in many contexts. good-bad; rett - fel; big-small. He is also a bit of a drama queen and likes to repeat the word `very' (twice or more) in both languages (jätte or veldigt in Swedish, very in English).
When you talk to him and tell him stuff that is going on, he likes to contribute to the conversation. You can seem him thinking/casting about for something to say.
He likes to analogize. He often volunteers the information that something is like another thing. Like with the cushion in the cafe: "Det ser ut som en torte" (It looks like a cake). But more commonly "Det er som en X" (It is like an X), where X is snake or ball or ghost or something he is interested in. In general, he does a lot of make-believe playing. He also spends hours with his toy train that moves excruciatingly slowly on its wooden tracks by means of a battery. We go through about one battery a day.
He is extremely good at recognizing and naming letters now, in both English and Swedish. If he tries to recite the alphabet he sometimes makes mistakes, but if you ask him to look for a particular letter or name a particular letter then he always gets it right, for all letters now in both languages. He can also name a slew of words that `begin´with that letter if you ask him (in both languages). He picks out letters in texts and points them out. He has alphabet puzzles and alphabet letters to play with on a magnetic board. This is one of his favourite toys. His favourite letter at the moment is Ö. Which he knows is an O with two dots. He pronounces it in an exaggerated fashion, picks exemplars out of his alphabet toy box and throws them around gleefully, or sticks them on to things, and shows them to perfect strangers. He treats them like most other kids treat their favourite dolls or animals (he does not play with the latter very much, except to occasionally throw them around). His hand-eye coordination is still not good enough to draw anything better than a curve vs. a straightish line, but he knows, if you ask him, that its easy to draw an O because it is "jätte jätte rundt" (very very round). He even tried, and managed to make a decent one once. He can count things, and gets it right consistently up to about five. But if he has to recite the numbers he uses the standard rhymes in Swedish or English and sometimes gets it wrong. With actual counting up to five, he doesn´t get it wrong. He still does not consistently recognise the written numbers though.
Speaking of rhymes, he loves the nursery rhyme book, and has started to follow along when I read. He seems to remember the sound of everything, and can do a recognisable job of burbling along even to long poems like the Walrus and the Carpenter. But it is clear that he only knows some of the bits as words, for the rest, he just makes some kind of sound approximation.
He plays turn taking games, like picture Bingo and the measles game where you pick up cards that either give you or take away certain numbers of spots. He is quite ok at this game, except the fact that he still does not realise that it is good to have fewer spots not more spots if you want to win the game.
Phonologically, he is doing a weird thing that started a few weeks ago. If a sentence he utters ends in a consonant, he will often pause and then finish up with a little CV syllable at the end which is the last consonant of his last word, plus a schwa. So "Vil ha den .....NUH" or, "Ees a bus .... SUH" , or even " No ..... WUH" It´s like comic Italian except for the long pause. He also actually says it quite quietly, as if to himself.
Mostly his Scandinavian seems very Swedish and no strong signs of Norwegian yet. But we do not know how he speaks when he is at the nursery.
Question formation. He has Where questions in Swedish very commonly, with inversion. I have not heard them in English yet, at least not uttered spontaneously. I also haven´t heard any yes-no questions, although he understands them. He has a subject who question which might be a whole memorized utterance "Vem bor dar inne? " (Who is living/hiding in there). So so far none of these questions have word orders that deviate from the order possible in an assertion. I will listen out for when I hear the first one.
He has copulas with adjectives and have with possession, but he seems to overuse the verb `have´ for descriptions where the predicate is a noun. Vidar ha mat/Vidar er ferdig nu (Vidar wants to have food/Vidar is finished now) but Vidar ha spøke (Vidar is a ghost).
He still refers to himself by name. And he is still bad at the you/me distinction. We are trying to use more pronouns to him now, but old habits die hard.
Ok. That´s it for now. More in the next post if I realise I have forgotten something important.
Friday 5 October 2012
Making a list of words Vidar says at the moment. (spontaneous utterances, not mere imitations). If I put them in categories I am likely to remember more.
Food:
døt --(grøt/porridge)
bot --(bread)
møt - (milk)
oost - (ost/cheese)
rees -(rice)
passa- (pasta)
matayoni - (macaroni)
tawnfates - (cornflakes)
mat (food)
yodurt - yoghurt
apa -apple
banan -banana
avotado -avocado
mando -mango
mooroot -(morot/carrot)
bottoyi -- (broccoli)
tawta --(torte/cake)
ees --(is/icecream)
vatten --(water) he says this very clearly
saft -(saft/juice) also very clear
tee - (tea)
apaseen -(orange)
meyoon --(melon)
hayon --(hallon/raspberries)
jordubba -(jordgubbe/strawberry)
bawbær -(blueberry)
veenbær -(redcurrants)
lingonsoot -(lingonsylt)
samp --(svamp/mushroom)
Actions/Verb Phrases that take Subjects:
(the ai ending is the present tense ending -Vr, where he pronounces all rs as glides)
yamlai --(fall)
pinnai --(run)
hoppai ---(jump)
yoya -- (roll)
aata bus/bil/rushtana (go by bus, car, slide)
yom say -- (hide)
eta X --- (eat X)
sova -- (sleep)
boshta tendene (brush teeth)
butta baya --- (change nappy)
bada --(bathe)
ta X -- take X
shøya -- (drive)
lese den -- (read it)
kan det -- (can do it)
titta -- (look/watch)
dansa -- (dance)
Food:
døt --(grøt/porridge)
bot --(bread)
møt - (milk)
oost - (ost/cheese)
rees -(rice)
passa- (pasta)
matayoni - (macaroni)
tawnfates - (cornflakes)
mat (food)
yodurt - yoghurt
apa -apple
banan -banana
avotado -avocado
mando -mango
mooroot -(morot/carrot)
bottoyi -- (broccoli)
tawta --(torte/cake)
ees --(is/icecream)
vatten --(water) he says this very clearly
saft -(saft/juice) also very clear
tee - (tea)
apaseen -(orange)
meyoon --(melon)
hayon --(hallon/raspberries)
jordubba -(jordgubbe/strawberry)
bawbær -(blueberry)
veenbær -(redcurrants)
lingonsoot -(lingonsylt)
samp --(svamp/mushroom)
Actions/Verb Phrases that take Subjects:
(the ai ending is the present tense ending -Vr, where he pronounces all rs as glides)
yamlai --(fall)
pinnai --(run)
hoppai ---(jump)
yoya -- (roll)
aata bus/bil/rushtana (go by bus, car, slide)
yom say -- (hide)
eta X --- (eat X)
sova -- (sleep)
boshta tendene (brush teeth)
butta baya --- (change nappy)
bada --(bathe)
ta X -- take X
shøya -- (drive)
lese den -- (read it)
kan det -- (can do it)
titta -- (look/watch)
dansa -- (dance)
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