Denseman on the Rattis

Formerly known as the Widmann Blog

enkidslinguistics

Anna's grammar

Anna’s language is developing rapidly at the moment – my recent posting is already out of date.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

0 thoughts on “Anna's grammar

  • I still like he combined language phrases such as yesterday morning’s “me tæer cold”

    Reply
  • I am delighted to read about Anna’s grammar!
    All the very best,
    Anna Grammar

    Reply

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