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More beer?!
This is too long a message for a Facebook
post so I’ve put the details in a blogpost. Should be of interest to those of
you interested in language acquisition (sign language, in particular). In spite
of its title, however, it’s probably of no interest to those of you who are
only interested in beer…
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| 'Look at the camera!' |
The background to the story is the language
of our youngest son, Justin. As many of you know from a birthday post back in
November, Justin is a child with Down Syndrome, the most obvious symptom of
which is his delay in speech production. As far as we can tell, Justin
understands simple utterances in both English and Japanese well enough to be
happy at home, and to engage with others in his day nursery. But his spoken
output is highly restricted. From the beginning of his language development, he
has compensated for this by using Makaton signs (these may be more familiar to
British readers who have seen the CBBC series Something Special/Mr Tumble, most
episodes of which are available on Youtube).
Makaton is not a fully fledged
sign language, though it shows many similarities to BSL; instead, it is
intended to be used to supplement speech for children with developmental delays
on one sort or another. Justin, though, has taken the system and run with it,
developing some of his own signs. This including a sign for beard, which is made by running his
upturned right palm, from left to right, under his own chin. (Justin likes
beards, for reasons unknown).
One of the good things about his signing is
that he can use it in place of either Japanese or English. He’s at 2-3 MLU(m),
so in principle he could code-mix, but he never does in spoken production. With
signs, though, things are different; for example, he’s happy to combine an
English verb plus signed object, or Japanese verb plus the same signed object
(VO vs. OV word order, respectively).
So much for the background. Here’s the
interesting bit. Two nights ago, we were out at a Mexican restaurant in Okamoto
(a rarity in this part of Japan). We had ordered and received our drinks and
had some appetisers. Justin finished his apple juice (SIGN-APPLE)-‘gyunyuu’
(Japanese milk), and wanted more (‘SIGN(APPLE)-gyunyuu-SIGN(MORE)’…
Then he looked across the table and seeing
my beer was nearly finished, he said/signed
Dada, SIGN(MORE), SIGN(BEARD),
SIGN(QUESTION [head tilt to left])
That is,
“Dad, d’you want more bear(d)?”
He knows the difference between beer and
beards—besides, I don’t have a beard (!)—but used the phonological similarity
between the two to generate the right sign. (As I understand it, kanji are selected for Western names on
the same principle of homophony).
Justin might only have a few words, but
he’s far from linguistically stupid!
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