an onomatopoeic toddler

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Marie,
   All children do this to some degree.  What is remarkable is that some
chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more.  It would be
very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the
percentage of words that are conventional from the total.  It would also be
helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just
this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more
than I can think of in the current literature.  Possibly other info-childes
readers will know of something I have missed.
    There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented
her own language and forced everyone to learn that.  If you couldn't speak
her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all.  I wonder what
experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your
family who have not yet learned his language.

--Brian MacWhinney 


On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" <mariehojholt at stofanet.dk> wrote:

> 
> Dear all!
> Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity
> to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics
> in Aarhus, Denmark.
> Here is my question:
> I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire
> actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds.
> My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care
> for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as
> consensus": words.
> 
> Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances:
> "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of
> breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr
> (sound of breaking" 
> - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!"
> 
> "words":
> water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking)
> food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound)
> sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound)
> toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr"
> Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr" 
> Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling)
> 
> 
> Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for
> children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds...
> He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home,
> now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs.
> I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything.
> I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates
> adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably.
> Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently
> somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour.
> He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try
> to push him, he ignores us or get angry.
> All my best,
> Marie Hoejholt
>