More Amyish :: "der Potty"

[pne]

Amy has developed (by one analysis) two auxiliary verbs! She's apparently taken them from German adverbs.

She uses "gerne" (roughly, "gladly") to mean "would like to/want to" and "lieber" ("rather") to mean "would rather". For example, "Ich gerne das haben" = "I would like to have that" (while pointing at a toy in a catalogue, for example); "Ich lieber Ucke essen" = "I would rather eat cucumber [than what I have on my board now]". Properly, that would be "Ich möchte gerne das haben" and "Ich möchte lieber Gurke essen", with the auxiliary "möchten"(? - not sure what the infinitive is), "to want, to would like to".

Note that her "auxiliary verb" is in the proper position for one (second position in the sentence) and the main verb, in infinitive, is at the end.

She also uses "gerne" to refer to others, e.g. "Mama gerne auch das essen?" = "Does Mummy want to eat this, too?" or "Mama gerne auch das essen." = "Mummy would like to eat this, too" or even "Mummy, you want to eat this, too." (What an assertion!)

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Another thing she says is "Darf das haben?" or "Kann Buch lesen?" for "May I have this?" or "Can I read (this/a) book?".

I wondered whether she doesn't know to include the subject, but she does say "ich" in sentences such as "Ich gerne das haben", so perhaps she's merely having trouble with the subject-verb inversion used in sentences such as this (in English and German), which would explain why the subject gets left out only in questions (V1 order) but not statements (V2 order).

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Also, she seems to have abstracted the word "not" in English, which is pretty good, I think, given that I typically use contractions when speaking to her. (I'm guessing that German is helping her here, where the word remains unreduced "nicht".)

For example, she'll say "I not go potty" or "I not have ladybird pillow".

I'm not sure how to encourage her to say that -- I'm glad that she's using the English word "not", but if I want to repeat her sentence, I'll typically do so not in her words but in mine, which will involve, more often than not, a contraction such as "won't", "don't", "haven't", "aren't", etc.

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In a vaguely-related note, it seems that Stella (frequently, if not always) calls Amy's potty "der Potty" now rather than "das Töpfchen". This amuses me :)

I'm not sure whether she adopted that word from me or from Amy (I'm guessing the latter).

It reminds me of when I was small, when there were certain words in our family which we borrowed from English into German; the ones that come to mind right now are "der Shed" and "das Study", referring to our bicycle/tool shed and my father's study/den, respectively. (Hence, sentences such as "Daddy ist im Study" -- phonetically, roughly /dEdi Is Im stEdi/.)

Comments

[musicus.livejournal.com]

"It reminds me of when I was small, when there were certain words in our family which we borrowed from English into German;"

while studying it was amusing to listen to the non-german students (mostly koreans). you could often hear german words such as "Vortragssal" or "Überaum" whole they were talking in their language.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Sounds like what I've heard from missionaries: We had a Termin with an Untersucher but since he wasn't there, we went to the Bahnhof and took the train back to the Wohnung.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

And that reminds me of our study-abroad student patois! Names of places--Hauptbahnhof, Stusi, WG, Bäckerei, etc.--were always German regardless of the matrix language.

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

with the auxiliary "möchten"(? - not sure what the infinitive is), "to want, to would like to"

This made me smile, because "to would like to" isn't a proper infinitive, but I'm not sure what would be -- "to like to"? "To will like to"? ("Would" being historically a conjugation of "will," which is no longer really a verb in English -- you can't say "to will" and mean that sense of the word.) "Would" and "möchte" are very similar!

[denial-land.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder what she'll say in 12 years about the fact that her dad has publicly chronicled her speech acquisition online...

(I kid; I'm a linguist, I really understand :P)

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I think the infinitive of "möchte" is "mögen" and "möchte" is the subjunctive, pretty parallel to English "would like".


"Daddy ist im Study" -- phonetically, roughly /dEdi Is Im stEdi/"

/stEdi/?


"I'm not sure how to encourage her to say [not]"

Why do you want to encourage her to say it? Wouldn't it make more sense if she learnt how to use the contracted forms, which are more probably more frequent in English and also more correct than her "not"-constructions?

[pne.livejournal.com]

I think the infinitive of "möchte" is "mögen" and "möchte" is the subjunctive, pretty parallel to English "would like".

I never thought about it that way (perhaps because the "Konjunktiv II" is rare), but you're right (http://www.verbix.com/cache/webverbix/22/mögen.shtml).