I have a question. Or a thought, really. An observation?

[conuly]

Ana tends to add an -a to certain verbs:

I pick-a up book!
No take-a nap! (When if it hadn't been one of those verbs, it would've not had an "a" in there)
You read-a da book.

It's not all verbs she does this with - she says she wants to turn off the light, not turna off, for example.

Does anybody have any idea why she might possibly be doing this? It's very confusing.

Comments

[velasco.livejournal.com]

Is-a she part Italian?

...j/k. Could just be a normal childhood language quirk? My sister said ephelants, evelators and emenies until she was at least four. I remember I had trouble with thistle (thithle). Whatever it is, it's cute :P

[ladyshrew.livejournal.com]

::giggles:: You read my mind.

[conuly]

This isn't a pronunciation quirk, though - it's a consistent affix to certain verbs. Why those verbs, and not others, I don't know....

[leora.livejournal.com]

I don't know. But most language quirks in young children sort themselves out as the child gets older and more experienced. So, I'd say - it's just one of those things.

[conuly]

Why does everybody think I'm worried? I'm not. I'm honestly just curious as to what is going on. It's not just a "language quirk" with no explanation. There is an explanation as to what is going on in her head when she does this, and I want to know what it is! God!

[leora.livejournal.com]

A lot of people do worry. The problem is that finding out what is going on in her head would be massively difficult. If you had recordings of large amounts of what she's been exposed to, it might be decipherable, but kids aren't usually able to explain it themselves and tracking down a source tends not to be feasible since kids get exposed to so much. So, people just learn to shrug and go - well, it'll sort itself out, since that is what happens.

Maybe she's been confusing some of the articles other people use as parts of verbs. I noticed that she doesn't seem to be properly using articles yet. So, maybe she just needs to sort out the word breaks and get the concept of articles.

[rachelkachel]

Can you tell if it's related to the consonant at the end? As ladyshrew said in your other post, it might be easier that way - to add an extra vowel sound depending on what the preceding sound was.

[conuly]

*grins*

Yeah, I know, figuring out *exactly* what she's thinking would be hard - but any speculation would be useful, because then I could listen more closely to see if it fits this pattern or that.

For example, for a while there I thought the -a took the place of a preposition, which seemed to fit, since it was either verb, one syllable preposition, rest of sentence - but then I heard "pick-a up". So that idea, already not that great (it irked me on a deep-down level) is shot.

[conuly]

Hm. I can do that tomorrow. I don't see any correlation between the end of the word, and the -a, though.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

To me it looked like the sharper, harder constanants. K, ck, T, etc. (And is the first letter after that hard or softish?) The sudden stop at the end may make adding the a easier than breathing however the heck we do at the end of a word that ends in a t, or ck, or something...

[conuly]

Stops.

But she doesn't consistently do that after stops - "I lick top!" and "I bite you!".

See the problem?

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Ok, lick top would have fit into what looked like a pattern to me, I would have expecter lick-a top, but bite you would have been ok (and not bite-a) because of the soft y sound.

So there goes my theory out the window.

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about language development, but I have a lecture series on the history of the English language, and the way his son's learning to speak showed some of the same mechanisms as the English language developing over time (I'm not making myself very clear, am I?). But, yeah, got it on mp3, but it'd take ages to YSI and it might not even fit in Gmail.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

That's what it sounds like to me too - quite a few snall children do this.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have to be consistent - in fact, one wouldn't expect it to be - and may be already fading out as she gets more facility with her consonants.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Washu! Washuwashuwashu! Too bad she's not the greatest linguistic genius in the universe. :(

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

I really wanna take a class on first language acquisition... And second language acquisition. Language acquisition is so insanely intriguing! But especially first.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Have you asked her if she does it because she thinks she sounds pretty?

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd recognize a linguistic genius. A few literary geniuses (in my opinion), but not a specifically linguistic one.

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you and the rest of her family sound like when you talk, but "going to" and "want to" usually end up sounding like "gonna" and "wanna" around here. Maybe that's confusing her? Those are pretty common verbs.

[conuly]

I don't think so. We don't say "wanna" or "want to" around her that much, nor "going to" and "gonna". It's "We'll have lunch first, then we'll go take a nap", that sort of thing. It's not a conscious choice to avoid those words, I think, just....

[padawank.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who icon.

random person comment

[solicitous.livejournal.com]

so hi LOL! I'm cruising through a mutual friend, [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], and this caught my eye, no "Take-a nap" "after lunch we'll go take a nap" it sounds to me that she's using the a after verbs that often follow with an "a" vrs "bite of"... "pick a book" equals "pick-a" see if that seems to fit. My son did that with early verbs, he would howl "no get-a book" at night because it was followed with to read before bed, then it became "no before bed" if he was tired. *wanders back off feeling sheepish*

Re: random person comment

[conuly]

Well, that's possible - leora already considered that, in fact.

Except it doesn't always fit. I didn't give enough examples, I know, but she'll often say things like "I bumpa da head!", for example - if -a is a replacement for "a" and "an", she's effectively putting two articles into her sentences. That's possible, but I'm not sure that's what is going on.

Of course, in the end, it'll probably be something really silly, but I won't know, because I'll never figure it out, will I?

[pne.livejournal.com]

I thought the same.

Also reminded me of the "Italian pasta diet" ("You walk past-a da ice cream parlor", etc.)