#child language

[katerinaaqu]

Do you know if there are any texts that suggest that Mycenaean children would have called their parents something different when they were young? (Like, the equivalent of an English-speaking child calling their parent papa/daddy or mama/mommy when they're young and dad/father or mom/mother when they're older)

That is a very good question! Unfortunately not to my knowledge and the texts of mycenean times are quite scarce compared to others and they are more logistics than anything else so babies calling to their parents might as well be a subject of literature which unfortunately is not rescued so far (so we only have the standard word "father" in mycenean greek aka pa-te). However in homeric times (a few hundred years later) we already see terms such as ἄττα/ἄσσα or τέττα both terms seem to stand for a call towards someone elder than you and means "father" or "uncle" etc similarly to how someone would call someone so these days. I have seen also the interpretations that terms like ἄττα are also in one way a baby word for "papa" or "daddy" or "dada" Generally can be translated simply as "old man" or "pappy"

Another more prominent example is the term that even nowadays in English we have "papa" that seems to appear in the Odyssey and it is πάππα which literally is written as you see it in english more or less

ἄττα seems to be connected to already proto-european dialects such as proto-germanic ones so there is a high chance that some root of it will exist in mycenean times although that is a pure speculation. Spanish speakers such as @aaronofithaca05 or @laiapolypharmakos etc are also familiar with the term "abuelo" for "grandpa" or "elder" which seems also to deprive from this according to one interpretation or share some common root down the line.

ἄττα has been used by characters like Telemachus to address Eumaeus τέττα was used by Diomedes for Sthenelus

Post by @katerinaaqu

💬 0  🔁 13  ❤️ 46 · τέττα, σιωπῇ ἧσο, ἐμῷ δ᾽ ἐπιπείθεο μύθῳ: Bro shut up and listen to what I am saying to understand · (Translation by me)

πάππα is used by Nausicaa to address her father Alcinous in 6th rhapsody of the Odyssey

[superlinguo]

Australian Journal of Linguistics special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly

The latest double issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics (45.3) is a special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly. It has been my absolute pleasure to be an editor for this special issue, bringing together an amazing range of work that touches on the contributions and legacy of Barbara F. Kelly.

Thanks to my co-editors Katharine Parton and Celeste Rodriguez Louro. Thanks also to all of the contributors, who were the loveliest collection of authors one could hope to work with (unsurprising, given that one of Barb's particular talents was collecting great people).

Almost all articles are Open Access, with the remainder available without paywall for the first six months.

I'll be sharing more later about the two contributions in the collection I was an author on. I wanted to start by sharing the full list of the articles and contributors in the special issue.

Special Issue: In Memory of Barbara F. Kelly Australian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 45(3)

For the love of people: Introduction to the special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly Celeste Rodríguez Louro, Katharine Parton & Lauren Gawne

Barbara F. Kelly and the study of children’s multimodal language socialization Eve V. Clark & Alan Rumsey

Multimodal strategies for engaging young Arrernte and Warlpiri children in storytelling and play Carmel O’Shannessy, Jennifer Green, Vanessa Davis, Jessie Bartlett, Alice Nelson, Ashleigh Jones & Denise Foster

Children’s introductions to story characters in Murrinhpatha, a traditional Australian language Lucinda Davidson & Gillian Wigglesworth

An acquisition sketch of polysynthetic verbal morphology in Murrinhpatha William Forshaw, Lucinda Davidson & Rachel Nordlinger

Children’s verbal inflection development in Pitjantjatjara: An acquisition sketch Wanyima Wighton, Rebecca Defina & Barbara F. Kelly

A comparative study of child-directed language across five cultures based on data from the Acquisition Sketch Project Evan Kidd, Birgit Hellwig, Rowena Garcia, Rebecca Defina, Lucinda Davidson & Shanley Allen

Say “I’m Uncle Lama” and sit with crossed legs: Socializing religious practice in Sherpa Sara Ciesielski

Natural disasters elicit spontaneous multimodal iconicity in onomatopoeia and gesture: Earthquake narratives from Nepal and New Zealand Lauren Gawne, Kristine A. Hildebrandt & Suzy Styles

Gestures for me and you: A corpus study of Matukar Panau referential gestures Danielle Barth & Kira Davey

From both sides now: Revisiting Dalabon kintax Nicholas Evans

Stance in [in]action: Being in the room where it happens Katharine Parton & G. Edwards

Decolonizing the introductory linguistics curriculum Celeste Rodríguez Louro, Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway, Ewan O’Brien, Katharina Froedrich & Luisa Miceli

[synticity]

any chance you have any recommendations for entry point resources for learning about early childhood developmental linguistics?

Sorry, I've been sitting on this ask for aaaaages. Work got busy lol. Anyways, this is far enough outside my field that I'm also going to give some general pointers on places to start finding information in linguistics on any given topic.

Language and Linguistics Compass is a journal that publishes a lot of fantastic review articles, which summarize previous research on a topic. Here's an LLC article on how hearing kids perceive and learn from phonetic input that they hear.

Academic presses like Oxford, Cambridge, and Wiley often publish what they call "handbooks" on topics where each chapter is written by a different expert in the field who reviews the previous research. For example, there's the Wiley Handbook of Child Language, and there's also the Cambridge Handbook of Child Language. I recommend not trying to sit and read a whole handbook, but approaching each chapter as if it was a standalone article.

Sometimes introductory textbooks can be a good place to start! I really like Essentials of Linguistics because it's free, open access, and online. Their chapter on Child Language Acquisition is a great overview of the research, and can help you choose where you want to go next to read more deeply.

If there's an article that's not open access, I recommend asking your nearest college student or grad student friend to see if they can get access through their university library's online sign-on.

You're also asking about a very big field with a lot of research, so don't feel like you have to get through everything I link here - just pick a couple things and start reading slowly. If you can get through an article or two every month, that's awesome! This can be a fun excuse to organize a reading club with friends/classmates/colleagues, and discussing stuff as you read will help you learn and retain stuff, too.

Hope that helps!

[kittycataphora]

not to brag, but i’ve been studying speech sounds since before i could walk 😌

[sociolingarticles]

Surprising facts about how we talk to babies

New research reveals a universal tone of voice adopted when we speak to babies.

[linguisten]

According to a new study toddlers who have more exposure to other children may be particularly good at certain word learning skills.

[phonaesthemes]

aside from just being adorable and often hilarious, i’m really fascinated by how she’s going about coming up with names for them all?? 

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 66: Using a rabbit to get kids chatting for science

If you're looking to try to figure out how kids talk, you might start by asking them some questions, or showing them a picture and trying to get them to talk about it. The problem is, sometimes kids are shy or not accustomed to answering direct questions from strangers, so these methods can underestimate them. A linguist named Bill Labov had a different idea: what if he brought a live rabbit into a school, told the kids that the rabbit was nervous but would calm down if they talked to it, turned the recorder on, and then left the room? Maybe kids who weren't comfortable talking to a teacher or researcher would feel more relaxed and chatty with a furry friend. (Spoiler: it worked!)

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about a forgotten gem of a linguistics paper about a rabbit! We talk about how Linguistics Twitter got excited about tracking down this paper based on a vague rumour, Labov's history of coming up with unique ways to record language in more natural environments (Anyone want to write a linguistics mystery novel called From Death to Department Stores?), and useful takeaways about how to talk with children (Tired: questions you already know the answer to. Inspired: respecting kids as peers). Plus: the name of the rabbit (Vincent) and the broader educational context that this paper was written in.

Listen to the episode about kids, rabbits and language acquisition research and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.