an onomatopoeic toddler

[Kenneth Hyde]

Marie,

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.

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.

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."

Ken


Kenneth Hyde
ELI & Dept of Linguistics
University of Delaware
kenny at udel.edu

"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulders will  
seriously cramp his style.—K. Z. Steven Brust



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