<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Marie,<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Your son is definitely not an isolated case. My oldest nephew went through a similar "stage." My sister reported (and video-documented) that he had an extensive vocabulary of onomatopoeic words that he created on his own (they weren't based on anything that other people were doing in his environment). Among others, he had a "plp-plp" sort of semi-click (it sounded exactly like bubbles in water) that was his word for "fish." What I found particularly striking is that many of the phenomena we are used to seeing with normal words also showed up with these O-words: over-generalization, under-extensions, etc. For example, "plp-plp" was used, not only to represent fish, but also to refer to Pepperidge Farms Goldfish crackers (a type of cheese cracker snack in the US, shaped like a fish). He also had a word "vrrm" (which was not the standard English 'vroom") which was used to refer only to his father's pickup truck and no other vehicles. And then was used to announce when his father arrived home, an interesting bit of semantic broadening.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Unfortunately, Robbie had shed almost all of his O-words before I was able to visit him, but I did get to hear "plp-plp' in use. As I said, my sister video-documented all of the words she could (as a non-linguist and non-research professional, her method was a bit obtrusive, consisting mostly of "Robbie, what's that?" and "Robbie, say "fish" etc.) She recently converted some of the videos to DVD format and sent them to me, but I haven't had a chance to look through them. I'm hoping they will be some-what usable.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Oh, and a related but different phenomena. A Chinese-American friend of mine contacted me about her daughter, when her daughter was just starting to acquire "words." Her concern was that her daughter was making a popping noise and using it as a word. In this case, I actually got to do some observations and the popping noise was a bi-labial egressive click. While it clearly wasn't a "non-speech" sound, it was interesting nevertheless as a sound that was not part of the phonological environment. And yes, it clearly was a "word" for the little girl, meaning "pretty."</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Ken</DIV><BR><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Goudy Old Style; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>Kenneth Hyde</DIV><DIV>ELI & Dept of Linguistics</DIV><DIV>University of Delaware</DIV><DIV><A href="mailto:kenny@udel.edu">kenny@udel.edu</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulders will seriously cramp his style.—K. Z. Steven Brust</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>