It’s certainly heartening to see a two-year-old grasp the concept of transitive verbs, particularly one that involves animate agent and undergoer. Here’s what happened:
Me : (nibble on niece’s chubby arm) Who bite mei-mei? (dimunitive for younger sister; which technically is an endearment for my niece.)
Niece: Yi-yi (endearment for aunt)
Me: Yi-yi bite who?
Niece: mei-mei.
In the past, a couple of weeks ago, she didn’t understand transitive verbs like that. All verbs then were intransitive consisting of only one argument. Now it seems almost like a milestone in her language learning. I guess ditransitive is the next step. One day she’d stop uttering “cut mama mei-mei” (which sounds strangely like a case of child abuse) - which actually stands for : mama cut cai4 for mei-mei. Well, baby steps, literally.
haha, so cute. babies/toddlers are so cute. i’m glad i meet two almost every day in my life at the moment. i will miss them horribly when i go for my summer course.
Yeah, I missed my niece when I was in China last year. In the 2 months I was away, she learnt to walk! That’s a milestone!
eh she got the u shaped curve of development not??? haha.
Not yet, cos I don’t speak inflected verbs to her. Hahaha. But I’m looking forward to the U-shaped curve! And how all things with four legs will be dog (well, to her, a tiger, lion, leopard, jaguar and puma are all “roar” (as in roaring wild animals on fours. Well done).
what languages are VSO? and you should totally get a videocam to record her!
Are there actually any languages that are VSO?! Nah, she will not be my, or any other person’s data.
omg so interesting! did you take child language? or just psycholing? i also want to study little toddlers!
Nope, I didn’t take Child Lang. Don’t intend to take either. Haha.
latin counted? maybe those with many inflections.
hmmm not as data la, but i mean then she’d have the chance to see her younger self when she’s older.
Hmmm. OE loh. Thon bera se mann enslaught = enslaught se mann thon bera. Ok. Yay.