Singaporean toddler refusal

American parents are well familiar with the NO phase-- a typical feature of toddler-hood.

My third experience of mothering a toddler is here in Singapore**. He has taken that step to be able to use verbal means to express REFUSAL. What's really funny is, he's learned to run right at the same time (as if he wants to refuse something and then run away from you).

But, Instead of "NO" what you'll hear over here is:

"DON'T WANT!"

Which with the unclear but ever so cute speech of a toddler sounds more like "duh-wan!"

WANT is typically considered an obligatorily transitive verb in English. Meaning, an explicitly stated direct object should follow if used in a grammatically correct manner, for standard English. Think of:
carry-- I carry [the bag].
take-- He takes [the bus].
wash, devour, wear, hold, say, etc etc
These verbs sound funny to an American ear if used without a direct object. It's like in Rocky Horror Picture Show, the open mouth there waiting with "Antici..........pation."

Other verbs are transitive, but not obligator-ily so. In other words, they can carry an object ("I'm eating candy") but they don't have to ("I'm eating"). That is, the direct object can be implied, and it's still considered grammatically correct.

When my little one says, "don't-want," part of the reason it sounds so cute is beccause want is usually one of those obligatorily transitive verbs. "I want it. I want that. I want some. I want [specific direct object]." But in Singaporean English, you will hear preschoolers eagerly repeating "I want! I want! I want!" with their hand up as they reach toward the desired object. Or, emphatically repeating "I don't-want! I don't-want!" arms crossed across the chest, a scowl on the face to refuse whatever is being offered or imposed.

Something else I notice about "don't want" is the use of PRO-drop. Singapore Colloquial English, like many other languages (ex. Spanish, Italian, and many more), uses PRO-drop, which is the dropping of the subject pronoun when the subject is obvious from the context. If I know you're talking about yourself, and you know that I know you're talking about yourself, you don't have to use I. PRO-drop can be truly confusing at times, and, I'll be frank, annoying when you hear older children do it (I'm like a broken record: "Let's try to talk using all the words. Let's say things in a way that our family will be able to understand when we go visit-- with all the words.").

But while the baby is still little and the novelty hasn't yet worn off, I think I will enjoy this cute little, Singaporean way to refuse things like wearing a diaper, eating dinner, or sharing toys with siblings.

** post written in Singapore, 2011

What happened to the verbs?

There are times when I just have to wonder, as I listen to my preschooler talk...
What happened to the verbs??? What happened to their morphemes? the past tense? the third person -s marker? the auxiliaries?
And the subjects, where are they? And the word order?

There may be other mothers out there, raising their children in a diverse linguistic environment, who wonder the same thing. Here are some languages samples to show you what I mean, and what she means in Standard American English:

A little bit draw my arm. (I drew on my arm a little bit.)
Why that baby cry? (Why is that baby crying?)
Why you laugh? (Why are you laughing?)
You see my hand? (Do/can you see my hand?)
This one go here. (This one goes here.)
This one wrong side. (This is the wrong side.)
He don't want pancake. (He doesn't want a pancake.)
How to close this up? (How do/can we close this up?)

Well, I can't really tell you where the verbs went. I guess that they're still in her head, but often hide there when she's at childcare all day, immersed in Singaporean** [childspeak] English. I know that they're still in her head, because I take it upon myself to use focused stimulation techniques to give her multiple models of the Standard English forms, and to hopefully elicit her use of them. I wanted to pass this along for any parents/teachers/caregivers/etc who want to know how to encourage bidialectalism (yes, this is a real word. I even looked it up to be sure I wasn't just making it up), without overwhelming yourself, your child, or making the child feel as if they're speaking "wrongly" when they use the other dialect.

A brief note here-- I don't mean to pick on my 4 year-old daughter in all of these posts. She just happens to be a very dynamic moment of language development. It would be fascinating to observe her language development now anyway, even if there weren't multiple languages and dialects involved. The diverse linguistic exposure only adds a little "spice." I have had to use similar language enrichment techniques with my 6 1/2 year old son, but basically they "worked," so he can switch back and forth between American and Singaporean English with great ease and fluency.

Following are some sample conversations my daughter and I might have to demonstrate use of the techniques. They basically involve:
- multiple repetitions of the desired form
- highlighting the target word (ex. saying it a bit louder, and/or with higher intonation, slowing down your rate of speech)
- demonstrating use of the target form in many similar but slightly different sentences and questions
- talk to keep the conversation going on that topic, because more often than not, the child will comment on what you said about what s/he said... but now using the desired form.

It ends up to be a very natural way to elicit use of the specific language target.

Child, "Why that baby cry?"
Adult, "Why IS that baby crying? I don't know. He IS crying."

Child, "You see my hand?"
Adult, "Yes, I DO see your hand! I DO. I DO see it. DO you see mine? I think you DO!"

Child, "This one wrong side."
Adult, "Oops! That IS the wrong side. It IS. Ah, look-- this IS the right side."

Child, "He don't want pancake."
Adult, "No, he DOESN'T want A pancake. He DOESN'T, no, he DOESN'T."

It may look a bit awkward, but I find that if you maintain eye contact with the child, and keep your voice animated about what you're saying, it ends up being quite natural. Conversations with children are different from adult conversations anyway. If anything, a child with typical language development will talk over you, especially if you try a lot of repetitions.

It may be tricky when the 1st and 2nd person forms are used. For example, "Why you laugh?" Is it better to repeat what the child says in 2nd person even though s/he was talking to you, and you should technically use 1st person to refer to yourself? Or is it better to model the language form in 1st person?

I usually end up stepping out of the indirect, naturalistic mode, and go towards a more explicit practice. I'll say, "You say, 'Why are you laughing?'", with a slowed down rate of speech, and then ask the child to repeat the question to me that way. I also often feign misunderstanding because "not all the words were used and I don't know what she means." So the child basically learns that sometimes, things have to be said in a specific way in order for understanding to occur and for the conversation to continue as desired.

I don't want my children to end up self-conscious of their speech & language. Or feeling that there's a cultural divide between them and their parents, who spent their childhoods on other sides of the planet, and had very different linguistic and personal experiences as they're having. But I do think that it's important for them to get practice using Standard English forms. Standard English is what they will encounter in school (and what will be expected of them in writing tasks). The should use Standard English in the future when looking for a job.

I try to encourage my children to become good communicators. I'm proud that they've been able to acquire the local English so that they're effective communicators with their peers and teachers. But I also want them to communicate effectively with English speakers outside the island... namely, their family "back home"! Experiences with learning language must include listening to language as well as multiple opportunities for practice; using these techniques allows us to do both.

** post written in Singapore, 2011

To take or to take off, that is the question

I was in a bookstore** a few weeks ago, and I saw a mother there with her daughter, who looked to be about 3 1/2 years old. While the mother calmly leafed through some books, the little girl also took the liberty to take some books off a shelf and look at them. Her mother called her so that they could leave, and the little girl started to try to put the book back on the shelf. But she couldn't, because the other books were there and the space was too tight. She started to get frustrated, and her mother called her again, also getting a bit frustrated that the girl hadn't yet come to her.

Finally, the little girl shouts, "Mama! Help me to put!"

It was such a cute little utterance to me, and so perfectly demonstrated a feature of verb usage here that I had been noticing-- for what are typically phrasal verbs in "my neck of the woods" (Southern USA), the use of the corresponding preposition is optional, OR the verb is substituted for a non-phrasal verb.

You may be thinking-- What???

OK- I've just discovered a lovely website called englishpage.com, with some very useful definitions, examples, and lists of English grammatical structures. They define a phrasal verb as "a verb plus a preposition or adverb which creates a meaning different from the original verb." It may help to think of the following examples:

to cut
to cut off
to cut in
to cut out
to cut up

Think of the variations of all the completely different meanings of "to turn" when you add different prepositions. Think of "put", "put up", "put with", and "put up with." Interesting, right?

Evidently there are separable and inseparable phrasal verbs. This distinction explains why it "sounds funny" to say "leave off it" rather than "leave it off." Leave off would be a separable phrasal verb. By the way, there are also phrasal verbs that don't really have a preference as to position of the object.

I had noticed that in Singapore, many of the phrasal verbs I typically grew up with are used differently. This list will be far from comprehensive, but it may be interesting and amusing to read for you Standard [Southern] American English speakers out there.

put on- wear ex. "Wear your shoes."
take off- take ex. "Why you take the hat?"
clean up- keep ex. "Children, keep the toys!"
hold on[to]- hold ex. "Hold your dog!"
take off- remove ex. "Remove the paper from the table."
pick up- carry ex. "I want to carry the baby."
pick out- choose ex. "Everyone may choose 1 color."
look at- see ex. "See the squirrel."
throw away- throw  ex. "Throw the tissue."

**keep can be particularly confusing at first-- since keep to me means to keep on your person, and usually here it means to put the object in its place, away from your person


I'm not saying that people NEVER use phrasal verbs, or implying that they don't use them "correctly"; it's just a tendency that I have noticed. And honestly, I believe that any Standard American English speaker would look at the above list and say that yes, put on typically means wear. I agree, but I admit that my ears perk up when time and time again, young and old, in formal and informal situations, it seems that the non-phrasal verb is preferred.

For some reason, it can be comforting to venture out and learn a new language, but to still see similarities with that new language and your native language. The first foreign language I studied was French, and while it was interesting to get to know what a rich verb morphology was like, what you could do with gender aspect on the noun phrase, part of me wondered why my best friend next to me, who had grown up speaking Spanish at home, was always exclaiming in wonder, "This is just like Spanish!" It was like she got to rediscover her native language as she studied the foreign language.

I finally got to experience this feeling when I studied Swedish in Sweden. Suddenly, English had roots and relations and a history that was fascinating to imagine. I was similarly reassured when studying German in Germamy, when we learned about trennbare Verben. These verbs reminded me of phrasal verbs, but with the complicating addition of CASE (dative, accusative). What had for so long seemed like a clumsy, awkward, and easily errored structure in English suddenly had a place in the history of languages. I could now claim to be staying in touch with my Germanic language roots by using sentences such as, "Put it up!" Forget the whole rule about not ending sentences with a preposition.

Hm... I admit, though, that as I use phrasal verbs to the best of my ability, I often wonder about that rule. It's like this guilty-conscience thing those of us have who've studied the English language or literature. How do we say it then, when the most natural way has the preposition at the end??? Maybe I should adopt the Singaporean English way and just avoid the use of phrasal verbs. If I did that, this is how my first paragraph would read:

I was in a bookstore a few weeks ago, and I saw a mother there with her daughter, who looked to be about 3 1/2 years old. While the mother calmly perused some books, the little girl also took the liberty to remove some books from a shelf and examine them. Her mother called her so that they could leave, and the little girl started to try to replace the book on the shelf. But she couldn't, because the other books were there and the space was too tight. She started to get frustrated, and her mother called her again, also getting a bit frustrated that the girl hadn't yet come to her.

Not too different, but changed enough to notice the difference.


** written in Singapore, 2010

Reduplication

For most all mothers, it can be fascinating to observe how your child develops language, whether s/he is exposed to one or many languages at home.

My youngest is now 18 months old, and has recently added his first "Singlish"** word to his expressive repertoire. Sadly enough, from slipping so often on a wet floor, he has always had a high interest in shiny, wet surfaces. This past week, he started saying "wet-wet" when he sees such a surface, complete with proper Singlish phonology, voicing, and intonation (the vowel is of rather short duration and the /t/ is produced as a glottal stop).

His use of "wet-wet" demonstrates use of Reduplication, which evidently has roots in Chinese and Malay. Verbs, adjectives, or nouns are repeated to add qualitative information to the modified word and/or entire utterance. For example--

verb: "You roll-roll the play-doh?" (the speaker is emphasizing the action, denoting that it is just for a short while)

adjective: "My tummy very fat-fat." (the speaker is simultaneously emphasizing the descriptive aspect of his/her stomach, while also suggesting that this isn't a case of morbid obesity, but just maybe a little chubby post mealtime)

noun: "Where the cat-cat?" (again, drawing attention to the cat, and possibly adding an endearing aspect)

Reduplication has an effect on modifying the entire utterance, rather than just the single word, to increase intimacy. As I tend to think of when the interaction involves children, use of Reduplication can increase the "cuteness" of what you're saying, and serve to make your speech more appealing to children, as it draws them in closer. Its use reminds me of the diminutive in Spanish, the suffixes "-ito", "-ico", "-uca", and etc, or "ina/ino" in Italian. As in Singlish, these suffixes can be added to many different parts of speech, and often simply add affection to the entire utterance. In many cases, the use of the diminutive has nothing to do the modified word being of a smaller size. In English, we have the "-y" suffix for nouns (ex. "doggy", "piggy"), but, the English version isn't used nearly as often and for such a wide variety of purposes as similar features are employed in other languages.

To quickly define some useful terminology-- simultaneous bilinguals are typically those children who are exposed to more than one language before 3 years of age; sequential bilinguals are exposed to a 2nd or additional language after 3 years of age. Although my 3 children are, being raised in the same household, they're having quite different preschool language experiences. That story would warrant its own blog entry, but let me just say that my nearly 4-year old daughter came to Singapore 1 year ago as a simultaneous multilingual for English, Spanish, Italian, and German (although she has not maintained Italian and German). She was sequentially exposed to Singlish and Mandarin.

Over the past year, my daughter has been processing the features of Singlish relative to the base of language knowledge she had already constructed in the first 3 years of life. She was really focusing on Reduplication for a period of time. She was reduplicating everything; appropriately, inappropriate, it didn't matter. "Can I have more-more snack-snack?" "Let's put it there-there." It was happening multiple times per utterance, and going way beyond the typical part-of-speech boundaries of verbs, adjectives, and nouns. I suppose she had her language system map of how things typically worked in English, but not ignoring the fact that she had been exposed to potential other uses of language in general from the experiences she had had with the 3 other languages in her repertoire. Maybe she focused so much on Reduplication in English because it was reminiscent of ways her family in Spain or her teachers in Italy would use language-- being able to play with words in an affectionate way, while also drawing attention to specific parts of the utterance or even making a comment about the size. Maybe it was just fun to get to do that in English.

My youngest will probably never make such overgeneralizations of Singlish features. His exposure to Singlish began at around 8 months of age. His use of Reduplication will probably fall more naturally in step with the local population's rules for use of Singlish. But that's not to say that use of overgeneralization of a specific language feature by native language speakers does not occur-- it does, all the time.

During the course of typical development, overgeneralization is quite common. Who hasn't heard a child talk about who "wonned" the game, or that they saw 2 "mouses" running outside? Children typically demonstrate overgeneralization of features for which they have recently learned the "rule"; they will overgeneralize the newly learned grammatical rule for the irregular exceptions to that rule (ex. past tense -ed and plural -s, respectively, for the previous examples). That's probably why my daughter soon stopped reduplicating everything. She heard the feature, liked it, learned how to do it (the rule), tried it out, found the inappropriate usage less socially-reinforcing than the appropriate usage, and stopped using it inappropriately.

I don't know why, but I just have a hunch that maybe there won't be so much overgeneralization with my baby's use of Reduplication, and other Singlish features. We'll see what else happens in his language development. And hopefully formal research will soon help us understand the patterns of language acquisition in the local population.


** written in Singapore, 2010