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.
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