Gwen likes adjectives and metasyntactic wossnames

[aryanhwy]

Monday we had a brief visit to the dr. for a routine immunization appointment that ended up being rescheduled because the appointment had been made automatically and didn't take into account the fact that she was on a slightly different schedule having coming from Germany (we go back in ~2 months). The nurse, whom we hadn't seen before, commented on Gwen's verbal skills, how she would've pegged her around 5 instead of closer to 3.

It never surprises me how good Gwen's verbal skills given that she basically doesn't shut up. If she doesn't have something to say, she's singing, and if she's not singing, she's humming (we've started telling her to "sing words!" because the humming can be really annoying.) I love some of the locutions she's started deploying recently (such as "Actually". "Actually, I want to have both!") But the phenomenon I've noticed most recently and decided warrants a note in my every growing notes about her linguistic abilities involves a strong preference for adjectives and metasyntactic wossnames. Why remember nouns when you can describe what it is you're referring to? I commented last week about her use of "my little things to eat" and "my crunchy things" instead of "froot loops", but there are other examples too:

* She received a battery-enhanced toy that has a stylus and a light-up touch-screen that teaches how to write letters and numbers (the recent explosion of her fine motor skills is a topic for another post); she has never bothered to ask what it is called, but instead refers to it as "my noisy thing" (and, yes, it is noisy).

* When we went to Beamish with hobbitomm and Eve a few weeks before Christmas, at the old-fashioned candy store I bought sasparilla drops and sherbet lemons to bring home for Christmas, I figured they were nice and traditionally British. The leftovers came home with us, and Gwen likes the lemon ones. However, when she wants one, she doesn't ask for a candy, as you'd expect. She asks for "a sucky thing".

(Though she did prove her quick adaptation to Britishness to all her American relations one day after having one of them, by announcing, in a perfect British accent, complete with lowered vowels and all, "That was a lovely cahn-dy".)

Comments

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

I can see some possibly amusing confusions when she starts saying "That's sucky!" in her context rather than the more normal slang context.

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

I msut say that I find it very entertainting to read about Gwen, it's really interestinga nd also reminds me of how it was to have toddlers. Though mine only spoke one language.

/Eva

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Alas, at this point, she now also only speaks one language. I really hope that I can interest her in taking German in school, at which point I hope to see the effects of our 21 months in Germany.