Amy's syntax

[pne]

Amy's using more complicated sentences now. She'll also use adjectives not just predicatively (apple—green "the apple is green") or attributively in a lone noun phrase (green appa "Look, there's a green apple") but attributively in sentences (bear—green appa—ee "The bear is eating the green apple").

She produces some SVO sentences, but many of her sentences are SOV instead, as in the above example.

I'm wondering whether this is under the influence of German, where the content verb goes at the end if there's an auxiliary verb as well (e.g. Ich(S) möchte den Apfel(O) essen(V) or Ich(S) habe den Apfel(O) gegessen(V); compare English "I(S) want to eat(V) the apple(O)" and "I(S) have eaten(V) the apple(O)").

I got that idea after hearing a sentence along the lines of Amy—Daddy—found "Amy's found Daddy", which she repeated to Stella in German as something like Amy—Daddy—funden "Amy hat Daddy gefunden"—with a stem of fund-, which is in the German past participle (used to form the compound past, the most common past tense form in my colloquial German) but not in the infinitive (find-), present tense (find-) or simple past (fand-), making me wonder whether her sentence structure comes from German sentences with auxiliary verbs.

One point of syntax where she obviously makes a difference is with also, too. At first, she only had a German word for this: auch "auch" ("also"), and she'd usually place it after the subject: Daddy—auch—cake—ee "Daddy's also eating cake".

Recently, however (starting not more than a couple of days ago), she's started using too when speaking English—and she'll put that at the end of the sentence. The previous example would then be Daddy—cake—ee—too "Daddy's eating cake, too".

So she's obviously picked up this different syntax. (I think I use "also" and "too" about the same amount when speaking with her; it's possible that some of her auch when speaking English are calques, as it were, of "also", rather than a use of a German sentence structure.)

Another word she picked up a while ago is noch'n—orthographically two words in standard German, "noch ein" or, a bit closer to pronunciation, "noch 'n", but often pronounced as one word. She seems to use it as a single word. It means "another", as in Daddy—noch'n appa—ee "Daddy's eating another apple".

Finally, she uses nein or, occasionally, no to mean "not", as in Amy nein haus "Amy (möchte) nicht raus" (Amy doesn't want to go outside, with her typical [h] for /r/), or nein hoho, nein tajts "(Amy möchte) nicht die Hose (anziehen), (Amy möchte) nicht die Strumpfhose (anziehen)" (Amy doesn't want to put on her trousers or her tights).

On the phonology front, she seems to have trouble with labial consonants, which surprises me a bit—I thought they'd be the easiest to pronounce for children, not to mention the easiest to copy on sight. However, she has [tI:] for "pig" and [tiN] for "pink", despite being able to say [pi:] clearly, for the name of the letter P.

Comments

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

Amy wears tights with trousers? Here in the U.S., I've only ever seen tights worn with shorts and skirts/dresses, but not with long trousers.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Sometimes when it's chilly, yes.

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

This reminds of the cafepress kids shirt: Mommy's Favorite Data Generator (http://www.cafepress.com/cascadilla.29999649). Unfortunately, there's no daddy version.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Does you say "Daddy" in German, too, or is it just Amy who does? It doesn't sound terribly weird to me given that that's the way you hear people speak in dubbed American movies. But I would have expected a more common German word like "Papa" or "Papi".

Daddy

[pne.livejournal.com]

Does you say "Daddy" in German, too, or is it just Amy who does?

Both Stella and I say "Daddy" in German (though it rhymes with "Teddy" when we do). It's what I always called my father, even in German (e.g. when referring to him when speaking to my sisters), so it's what feels natural to me.

(On the other hand, my mother was "Mummy" in English but "Mama" in German -- and Stella is "Mami" in German and "Mummy" in English.)

Re: Daddy

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

""Daddy" in German (though it rhymes with "Teddy" when we do)"
"and Stella is "Mami" in German and "Mummy" in English.)"

I imagine Amy couldn't figure out that Stella has two different "names" in English and German while you only have one. "Mummy" probably isn't any more different from "Mami" than "Daddy" in English pronunciation is from "Daddy" in German pronunciation.

It surprises me that you as an English native speaker don't pronounce English words correctly in German.

Re: Daddy

[pne.livejournal.com]

It surprises me that you as an English native speaker don't pronounce English words correctly in German.

It would sound unnatural for me to do so.

I pronounce "Sport" with an sh- sound at the beginning, too, and "Baby" with an "eh" sounds rather than "ej". And when talking about computer terms, I pronounce "Stack" to rhyme with "Gebäck", or "Download" to rhyme with "Traumboot", etc. I'm talking German, after all.

It would be as if I were talking in English and mentioning that I went to Paris (using the French pronunciation: pa-GHEE).

...on the other hand, when I'm speaking in English, I do pronounce some people's names in German (e.g. Erik is [e:RIk] rather than [Er\Ik]).

Re: Daddy

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I think there may be two kinds of foreign words.

Words like "Sport", "London", "Paris", "Peking", "Keks", "Tante" etc. are pronounced by (almost?) all German speakers in a German manner. Even if the background of the word should be known to the speaker, he will use the German pronunciation.

And there are other words that feel more foreign and - I may be wrong but I think that people try to pronounce those as closely to the original word as possible. A lot of German speakers can't say "stack" so they'll say something like "steck". But I don't think they do it because they think it is the German pronunciation of the word. Actually, it is my impression that most native German speakers use the same pronunciation of those words in English and German.

As I said, I think it is interesting that this is different for you. Perhaps since you grew up speaking both German and English, you didn't grasp the idea that people are just trying to pronounce those words the English way and accepted the German speakers' pronunciation attempts as the equivalents of those words in the German language.

You once wrote that someone told you you had a German accent in English. Did that person (at least also) listen to your German, in which you used English words?

Re: Daddy

[pne.livejournal.com]

As I said, I think it is interesting that this is different for you. Perhaps since you grew up speaking both German and English, you didn't grasp the idea that people are just trying to pronounce those words the English way and accepted the German speakers' pronunciation attempts as the equivalents of those words in the German language.

Yes, that sounds about right.

Somebody should study me linguistically :)

[tungol.livejournal.com]

"On the phonology front, she seems to have trouble with labial consonants, which surprises me a bit—I thought they'd be the easiest to pronounce for children, not to mention the easiest to copy on sight."

I believe I've learnt that children seem to find dentals easiest to produce, followed fairly closely by labials because of the visual input. (I think I've heard that most babies' babbling has something like 70% dental consonants, 30% labial consonants, but that deaf babies babble with far more labials because that's what they can see.)