Trixie has been babbling deh/da/dah variations for the past 4-6 weeks. Now, before anyone gets excited, I don’t believe “deh-deh” means anything in her world. For one thing she doesn’t distinguish between me or the empty cardboard box on the floor. Oftentimes, I’m the “da-da” of last resort after all the inanimate objects in the apartment fail to respond. Just to be clear, Jennifer is also “dah-dah”.
Trixie is obviously not learning or associating the names of any particular object. Namely because we never referred to me as “Da-Da” before she started up with this. I was attempting to get her to call me “Benmac” and her mother either “Doc” or “Hey Lady!”
Furthermore, if she were vocalizing based on her language exposure as opposed to a natural evolution of pronounceable syllables, then her vocabulary would be completely different. The first word out of her mouth would be “Trixie” since that’s pretty much every other word around here. Followed closely by “crap”, “don’t”, “eat”, “that”, “no”, “nooooo”, “stop”, “shit” and “milk.”
For now we’re stuck with “Dah-Dah” on a non-stop loop; the word has lost all meaning.
Meaning will get attached one of these days. Colum was saying “meh” a lot without meaning and then one day, he started using it to mean “mommy.” Now he’s up to “ma-ma”, “da-da”. Interestingly, he uses “da-da” to mean me or anything he associates with me – the video camera, for instance, elicits a “da-da”, as does mealtime (I am usually the one who feeds him solid food).
Rachel’s been saying “A-da-da-da” or variations for a little while, too. While I don’t think the sounds are actually words, in that I don’t think any particular sound-set has a unique (or relatively unique) correllative object (or thought — let’s avoid Wittgenstein for now), I have noticed that she’ll sometimes inflect the “A-da-da-da” strings like sentences, with a lift at the end for questions, or a sterner voice for commands. So sometimes “A-da-da-da-da!” means, “Mobile, spin! make music!” (often followed by “A-da-da-da-da!” meaning “I am very angry that you have not obeyed my clear and direct command, mobile!”) and sometimes it will be “A-da-da-da?” meaning “What’s that?”
Alternately, I could be reading way too much into this. She could just be practicing inflections along with her verbalizations. Or I could just be interpreting what isn’t there at all.
–FD
This post inspired me to go on at length about Colum’s talking over on his site.
That’s a very valid point about inflection. Even if the words are meaningless, there is always context. Or to put it another way, as far as Trixie is concerned, she’s talking.
as for more realistic first words, ours would be very similar if you exchanged “trixie” for: “not” “the” “cat’s” “tail” “ears” “legs” “nose” “litter” …plus “how” “about” “a” “toy” “instead” “of” “that” “electrical” “cord” “plastic bag” and “paper clip”.
Doonesbury readers from 1975/76 will remember that a small child started quoting Jimmy Carter’s televised election speeches verbatim long before she spoke her first “non-media” word. “Send me to Washington!” Good luck, Trix.
I think BenMac is on to something; Trixie might very well mean “crap” “don’t” “eat” “that” with her da/deh-ing (unless she’s trying to pull off doobie doobie do without getting her vowels togther.) I am amazed at how quickly kids pick up the most important words (whether through emphasis or repetition, I don’t know) — when my brother was three years old, my mom had dropped an ice cube tray on the floor.
John: “goddamn shit, mommy?”
Mom: “not this time, honey. maybe just shit.”
Honesty is still the best policy, even in vocabulary.
Funny you should say that – my son’s first word WAS his own name (at 10 months) and probably because he was hearing it every 30 seconds. Being able to pronounce “L” and “N” helped though.
I’m not sure whether that means my son has an inflated sense of self-esteem, but he stopped saying his name pretty quickly and replaced it with his three favorite words – FLAG, BALL and MEOW. And yes, eventually he said MA and DAD. And NO! – a lot.
My wife and were talking about talking yesterday and something hit me: words babies can say are affected by their not having a full mouth of teeth. Most letters require teeth, and all the sounds babies make early on (“ma”, “da”, “ba’) can all be made toothlessly.
That’s why Lennon could say his name as his first word – the only sound that might need teeth is the “l”, but a pretty close approximation can be made without them.
So “Trixie” is probably out because it requires teeth for the “t” and the “x”. “Benmac” is out too, because teeth are needed for the hard “c” sound. But she might be able to do “Benmaa”.
You don’t need teeth for hard “C?” Unless I’ve been saying it wrong. Soft C/S, I could see that, but I’m pretty sure not the back-of-the-mouth/top-of-the-throat stop consonants.
Which is not to say the lack of teeth doesn’t have a lot to do with words available. Just not those sounds.
–FD
“You don’t need teeth for hard “C?” ”
No; the sound’s made by pressing the middle of the tongue up against the roof of the mouth and making the “uh” vowel.
I was just wondering if this website is only for family purposes? A friend found this site…I actually don’t know how…and passed it on to me and my ‘mommy group’..mostly as a curiosity thing. We are all (our mommy group)flabergasted at the amount of info. you are collecting on your little girl. We wish we all had time to do this ourselves as we can see how useful it can be for tracking sleep patterns/problems of any sort etc. Truly amazing as personally I find little time in the day to even be typing this note. We are wondering where you learned to do these graphs and this tracking etc, and have you found all this tracking useful so far in helping her to sleep better etc.?
little momma