me: No, this is an orange! A clementine, actually. Mmm. It tastes nice.
H: Niiice baby. Niiice dog dog. Dog dog night night? Owie night night. Owie BALLOON!!
me: Where's your balloon?
H: pointing Balloon!!!
This was part of our conversation over breakfast.
One of the things I learned in grad school that stuck with me the most was that language acquisition is a mystery. No one understands just how babies and toddlers go about mastering thousands of words and really complex grammatical structures in a few short years. They follow examples for sure, but there's no way they could hear enough examples of all of the grammar they end up learning in order to explain it that way. Noam Chomsky said that our brains are hard wired to learn language and that we have a little black box in there that gets activated in early childhood by hearing language around us. But how exactly something like that would work? No one knows. Other linguists, education psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have their own theories, and they might explain parts of the process, but overall it is still a mystery.
Hendrik is putting two word phrases together, and it's so much fun to see it develop. I would say that while his language has a small vocabulary as of yet, it is very rich with inflections. So when he says Night night Daddy, it can mean Daddy's sleeping, I'm tired, where's my blanket, and probably other stuff too. It keeps us on our toes guessing what he means. Oh! And I am happy to announce that I have now been "Mama" or sometimes "Mommy" consistently for several weeks! Up until now I have answered to Daddy. I guess Hendrik has seen me as an extension of his much funner daddy.
I love seeing the wheels in his head turn. When he learns a new word he will practice it over and over-- for the last little while he's been saying eyeBROW (only, it comes out more as eyeBWOW) and pointing to everyone's eyebrows. I'll catch him reading a book to himself and it sounds something like this: "Dog dog night night, baby night night, DOG DOG. Mama. Daddy. Baby. EYEBWOW. Balloon!"
One night at dinner he pointed to my nearly empty plate and said, "All gone [ahguh] Mama." Then he went around and plugged in other people for all the other permutations: All gone baby, all gone Daddy, all gone Owie, all gone balloon, all gone bee... When he figures out an expression, I hear him for a day or two talking to himself and saying all the possible combinations out loud. Usually while he's running after the balloon or reading a book about a dog.
So, when you come over and hang out with Hendrik, don't be surprised if the conversation revolves around the activities of some dog dogs, the whereabouts of the bee, and whether or not you've finished all your food. He will love you for understanding some weighty issues in his world!