THE ESSENTIAL
- The words that designate the elements of their environment are among the first to be used by babies
- ‘”This”, “that”, “here” and “there” are pronounced as quickly as “mom”
- This rule applies regardless of the language
First there is the mother. But if the first words of the baby are addressed to the one who feeds him, those which make it possible to designate his immediate environment, like “this” yes “that” follow immediately. This is revealed by the largest study ever conducted on early vocabulary development. It was conducted by researchers at Cornell University and was published on April 7 in the Journal of Child Language.
If the early use of these words which draw attention to objects has already been documented in languages such as English, Spanish or Mandarin which have a relatively simple vocabulary for these demonstratives, the interest of Cornell’s study is to show that this also works in languages with more complex structures.
A willingness to share attention
Thus the study made it possible to analyze the practices of 45 Peruvian babies in regions where Ticuna is spoken, a dialect shared by less than 70,000 natives and which includes six demonstratives. For more than a year, in a community living in this Amazon region, Amalia Skilton, a linguistics specialist and author of this study, recorded children from 1 to 4 years old in their interactions. Despite their small vocabulary, a large majority of these children used the equivalent of words like “this”, “that”, “here”, or “there”, thus indicating their willingness to share attention.
The role of demonstratives in language development
“These elements confirm that children begin to use these words around the age of 12 to 18 months, as early as the first stereotyped words like ‘mom’ whatever language they speak”, infers Amalia Skilton, confirming as well as demonstratives play a main role in the development of language.
On the other hand, what this study also confirms is that if very young children are eager to share attention and quickly integrate the words that allow them to do so, they have difficulty understanding the point of view of others. Clearly, if a child shows an object that interests him, it is impossible to make him understand the reasons why, for example, we cannot let him grasp it. And above all, it is sometimes difficult to fully understand what attracts his attention: “We already knew that children have difficulty understanding what others know or believe and this research indicates that they also have difficulty understanding how others people see objects in space”, emphasizes Amalia Skilton who believes that in this register, cognitive development takes precedence over language learning.