Anna's grammar

Syntax Error – Folded Up Beyond All Recognition
Originally uploaded by Simon Pow

Anna’s language is developing rapidly at the moment – my recent posting is already out of date.

However, I feel I should write a bit about her grammar while it’s still simple.

For a very long time, most of her utterances consisted of one or two words.

The vocative would be expressed by a name on its own (Dade! Mimi!), but in all other cases, the name would be introduced by the copula/article ɛ, in the same way as all other words (ɛ dade “It/that/he is daddy.” ɛ βaβa “It’s a flower.” ɛ mi “It’s mine!”

The only other common utterance was a de? “What’s that?”

She then started combining these two sentences: a de ɛ βaβa? “Is that a flower?” (lit. “What’s that, a flower?”)

Recently, she started using the a and de separately, so Phyllis recently was told about Marcel that de ɛ ɛ lalɔ “he is my sibling” (lit. “that is a Charlotte”).

As I wrote above, her language is changing rapidly at the moment. In particular, she’s starting to repeat words, sentences and even fragments of songs (“Lo, lo, lo, aaaaa!”), so it’s beginning to be harder to decide when she’s copying a sentence she’s heard, and when she’s actually constructing one on her own.