typical early words for babies and toddlers in your language

[dustthouart]

From both my (admittedly introductory) study of linguistics and my own experience with my 14 month old, it seems that the early words of children are guided chiefly by #1 what the children themselves find most urgent and interesting to communicate, #2 what their unskilled and immature muscles find possible to form, and #3 starting with nouns and

Comments

[viciousdisorder]

I'm not sure how easy some signs are to form recognisably and easily... but my guess is that in most languages most children will learn words/sounds that are as you say easy to repeat and infact are often repetitive as well eg mama vs "antidisestablishmentarianism". And as you say concrete examples (in the form of nouns and perhaps verbs) are going to be preferentially used first because that's what they can immediately have an association with, babies aren't exactly about to understand metaphysics on a subatomic level and start sprouting on about quarks etc.

All this being said my third or fourth word (having only been taught English and no signs - and yeah my parents do not remember my first few words) was "shop" which is reasonably complex to form as far as blending... and it's a little bit more of an abstract reference because it came to be uttered in response to being told that I wasn't going to be able to have strawberries and ice-cream for dessert because there weren't any strawberries left. I wanted to communicate with my parents what they could/would do to remedy the situation ;)