Talk:Ducks/@comment-24947466-20150803214433

Gillen, Julia (2003:70 (e87))

One day when she was twenty-two months old, Molly demonstrated that she had learnt a valuable lesson about the arbitrary quality of language. She was eating a banana which she was waving about and calling a[nnə]. Suddenly she stopped and pointed the fruit at her grandmotherand exclaimed delightedly [nnə]. She had suddenly realised that the same word stood for both fruit and person.

A few days later, her mother noticed that Molly was beginning to move on from holophrastic utterances to simple constructions. She said,‘Do it’ and ‘What is it?’ (each in appropriate circumstances), two phrases that she used increasingly in the next few weeks. Molly had grasped theessential principle of linking words to express complex ideas. This is an insight and skill that will continue to develop over many years.