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

[biascut]

To use anecdata, every baby I know in real life who signs had MILK as their first sign. I have never heard of a single baby who had "milk" as among their first English words, whether they sign or not. Surely this point to the fact that "milk", being a very consonant heavy word, with a liquid and a palatal consonant, and with a vowel sound that is not common among early babbling, is not an easy word for babies to say? Milk, the concept, is certainly one of the most important things in any baby's life.

It is, but is it the word that most parents use for it? Most of my friends say something like, "Oh, are you hungry baby?" or "Oh, are you ready to nurse?", not necessarily "do you want some milk? MILK?" Lots of my friends kids had something which meant "I would like milk" as an early word, but it was usually something completely different - "nana" or "boovah" or "momomom" or whatever, possibly based on whatever sounds the baby things she's hearing when her parent feeds her.

As I understand it, the latest theory on how babies learn language is that they are ruthlessly efficient. So there is probably an early process of

parent offers milk, accompanied by a range of sounds
baby starts to single out a particular sound, or regularly says *%&!!@!* when wanting milk
parent learns that baby associates *%&!!@!*with milk and asks for milk with it
baby wants milk, says *%&!!@!*, parent provides milk, link between *%&!!@!* and milk reestablished for baby and parent
baby has no need to learn further sound for milk and can concentrate on other sounds with other interesting effects. (Dat! No!)

If you had a parent who ruthlessly used "MILK" and only responded to something that sounded like, "MIL", there would be much more incentive for the baby to learn it early.

So I think you were probably signing "MILK" really clearly and distinctly, but actually saying, "Aw baby, are you hungry?" or "Ready to feed, pet?" or a whole host of other things, so the MILK sign is what she's latched on to. And once she's got that and it works, there's no immediate need to learn another word.