conversations with Gwen

[aryanhwy]

I've recorded most of these over on FB, but in years to come they'll be easier to find here.

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Gwen doesn't quite understand subset yet. If I call something a bird, she'll angrily correct me, "That's a [parrot|toucan|seagull|swallow|etc.]". Just now, I refered to her Duplo lion and tiger cubs as "animals" and she said "they're not animals, they're cubs!" "Cubs ARE animals." "No, they're not!" "Yes, they are; cubs are animals, cats are animals, humans are animals..."

"What are...hoo-mans?"

"We are. You and I are humans. And humans are animals."

"We are not animals! We are persons! Persons are not animals! It would be funny if persons were animals! I'm not an animal, I'm just a Gwen!"
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Gwen, on the way to nursery this morning: "There's nothing in my hat, there's nothing in my hat, E I N G O, there's nothing in my hat!"

*pause*

"MOM! What is nothing?"

Despite my training and my profession, I felt strangely ill-prepared to answer this question.
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What's on my mind, FB, you ask? Why, the epistemology of four year olds. "I don't think there is any more left, but I think there is a little more left" was just recently asserted, as if it were a perfectly consistent statement. (And substitution instances of this are not uncommon in this household.)

I do not understand what proposition is the desired one to be expressed by such a sentence. It clearly doesn't affect her ability to reason (in so far as it doesn't appear to license more inferences than she usually makes), so some sort of non-monotonic or incomplete inference system is at play, but the sad thing is, by the time she's able to answer any questions about what, really, does she mean when she reports beliefs in that way?, she probably won't have this epistemology any more. So I'll remain forever in the dark.

[Later comment on post] A similar example from just now: "Puppy is a bit small, but she IS big."
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I don't know what it is about this weekend, but we're really having the full gamut of philosophical discussions. First, what is nothing, then, what is a person, now: what are beliefs?

Gwen: "What's this song called?"

Me: "Don't Stop Believin'."

G: "What's 'believing'?"

M: "The act of having or holding a belief."

G: "What's a belief?"

M: "It's a thought that you think is true."
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Weird and wonderful.

Comments

[jf-scientist.livejournal.com]

N does the same thing with internally inconsistent statements and it drives me bonkers. "It's all gone but it's not all gone." Aaargh, four. I usually point out that he needs to pick one. And then he argues...

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried enforcing Law of Excluded Middle along with Principle of Non-Contradiction (i.e., "It's either one or the other and it can't be both, pick one"), but I'm fairly certain that this would lead to argument too...

I KNOW that there is something systematic going on here, I can tell from the contexts in which she does this, but by the time she can articulate what the system is, she'll have enough words to no longer use this construction, which is a bit sad.

[jf-scientist.livejournal.com]

Hah. I think i get hung up on N's basal argument rate, which is high enough to swamp out all my curiosity about linguistic processing.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I sort of feel that way sometimes with Gwen's base rate of merely talking...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

It would be fun if she were able to articulate what *she* means when she says those things. (Like, "tell me which of the pictures in this book are animals".) But I suspect the biggest thing going on here is that we don't learn language in terms of logical propositions. We go from specific particulars to emergent generalizations. Those generalizations will make sense in terms of the limited data set we've been offered, but they won't necessarily align immediately with the larger consensus of meaning.

For example, one may start out having a clear notion that "puppy" and "dog" are entirely different things, based on interactional protocols. Conversely, one may start out by generalizing "dog" (or "horsey" or some other primary prototype) to apply to "quadrupeds in a particular size range and with a particular interactional protocol".

Like I mentioned on FB, I suspect that the data inputs for "isn't any more" have been sufficiently ambiguous to allow for "a little more" being simultaneously true.

[world-rim-walke.livejournal.com]

Adorable!

[wanderingpixie.livejournal.com]

When R says things like that, my usual interpretation is that she is trying to express an in between that she can't find / doesn't know the right phrase for. So, the original example would mean "There isn't much more left" and the puppy example would mean "the puppy is small in the grand scheme of creatures, but big for a puppy". I know I'm not always right, but sometimes I express my interpretation and she gives me this look of "Yes!!! Those are the words I needed!" and repeats it.  (And sometimes I think she's just trying to sound like she thinks grown ups sound :P)

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I would love to be able to reword and repeat back, to get confirmation that I understand, but right now, we're in a stage where her inner concepts are so complex, and the mismatch between them and her language is so great, that I often find myself at a complete loss.

I'll hazard a guess and say we'll be out of this stage within 6 months. We'll see!

[(Anonymous)]

I recently had to try to explain "specific" to Bun Bun. I was like, ok, do I start with generic? Oh, these words we take for granted! --Bunny

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Oooh, fun!