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

[sayga]

We did sign and English with both our babies, and sometimes either of them would have a sign for one thing and a word for another. "Cat" was one where we would hear "ca-" and see fingers moving near the face (ASL sign mimics whiskers on a cat). We never got to the point where the child was using more than 3 signed words put together ("more _____" and "_____ please" were the most common 2-word combinations, and the only times we saw 3 words in sign was "more _____ please"). We did see sentences in English accompanied by 1-2 signs, perhaps for clarification.

Even though they aquired about 60-80 signs each, by the time they had all those words in English too, they dropped the sign (and since we were using the signs for ease of communication, not teaching another language, we didn't insist they continue to sign). That happened around age 2.

I loved watching the whole process. It was fascinating and I wrote about it a lot. Neither child spoke nor signed "mom/mother" or "dad/father" until at least 18 months, by which time they had around 30-50 words already. They also didn't learn yes/no for a surprising amount of time (again, I think at least 18 months). My first daughter's first sign/word was fish (and spoken shhshh) at 6 months. My second daughter's first signs were light and cat at 7 months. I have a list of words and signs at the age and order they were aquired, if you're interested. I also have notes on word/sign combinations, reduplication both in sign and spoken English, and other things like that. My journal is locked, but I'd be glad to copy paste if you're curious.