Oh banana!

It's nine in the morning on football Sunday, Del is sleeping soundly (fingers crossed), Daddy F and I are in PJs on the couch with hot mugs of tea, and the skies outside are grey and gloomy. It almost feels like actual winter here in the land where palm trees trump pine trees and where tourists think it's swimming weather even when it's 45 degrees and raining. I say that I miss "the seasons," but I think what I mean is that I miss the beauty of autumn and the fun and surprise of spring. I certainly don't miss the four months of frigid air and slate-colored skies. Admittedly, a Midwest winter leaves much to be desired. Mountains, for example. And sunshine. But since that is where I am from and the winters there are dark and cold, today is one of those rare California days that has me feeling like I'm home. So I invite the nostalgia in to hang out for a while, it being the season and all, and hunker down with us for a few hours of touchdowns and slipper socks.

But before I go, we must of course have a quick chat about language!

ASL charges onward!
Del added a new sign to her set about a week ago, which Daddy F and I had been trying to decipher. She very carefully makes the sign for "D," and then bends and unbends her index finger. Since this is fairly close to her name sign, we were wondering if she was trying to sign her name. We also guessed she could be signing "do-do?" because her daddy signs that to her all the time. Neither of these seemed like the right guess, and didn't line up with typical development, as I was expecting her next few signs to represent tangible things (nouns) like cereal or toy or water. So we just continued to encourage her by responding to the new sign in different ways, hoping that idiot mom and dad would sooner than later figure out what our clever little lady has been trying to tell us for a week now.

Then, (pah!) it all came together. . .

Earlier this morning Daddy F, Del and I were all chatting with Grandma J on the video phone (VP). Del recognized her Grandma right away and got very excited and started waving. I sat Del between Daddy F and I on the couch and attempted to eat my oatmeal as Del climbed all over me and lunged for my breakfast. I did my best to restrain her on my lap and continued to eat, while Grandma laughed at Del's antics. Then Grandma told us she saw Del sign the new "D" sign with finger wiggle that we had just told her about. I looked at Del and sure enough, she was still signing it. I still didn't know what she wanted, but I knew she was hungry so I handed her to daddy and grabbed a banana from the kitchen. When I gave it to her she got really excited (more so than usual. . .she loves to eat and really loves bananas so banana eating is typically an exciting event), and signed her new sign again. Then again. And looked at me with the expression that looked like, "Finally mommy! What took you so long?" and Daddy F signed "banana" and Del flapped her arms and laughed and signed her version of "banana" once again and it was like magic. It was so incredible not just to learn what she was trying to say and to have it reinforced that she is truly communicating with us, but to see her gain trust in us, that we will try to figure out what she wants to say.

The She-Beast Roars (alternate title: Del's sound exploration continues)

My oh my how the days fly by. Here I am, desperately late in buying my airplane tickets for a trip home for the holidays, and I barely registered that Thanksgiving has come and gone so quickly. Again. It would seem I still find wonder in the rapidity of life. It still surprises me when I blink and I'm this old. Sitting right here. On this day of all days. And my daughter is nearing nine months old. I ponder such thoughts and can't help but wonder: is this what drives us humans in our lives to learn and do and accomplish? Is that what drives me? The incessant feeling as though the passing of time is like gravity towards the future, pulling us along, every day closer to our demise than our inception. Is that what makes us stop to savor the magic and beauty of the tiny moments in life? Is that why I get caught up staring at Del, trying to memorize what her face looks like this very moment? Life and language are both fleeting and ephemeral like that. The perfect words come out to match the moment just experienced, and then poof! they're both gone, dissipated into the ether and forever after relying on our tricky memories to lock those moments, those images, those words down in some cerebral vault to be brought forth and enjoyed at some point in the future.

Wow, ok. Major digression there. Just feeling a little mortal lately. Something to do with motherhood, I'm thinking.

Onto the declared subject of this blog: Del's growling. And screeching. And noise making in general. It is delightful and exciting and only very rarely is it so terrible that I have to hand her off to Daddy F so I can run outside and give my ears a break. She stopped babbling a few weeks back, seemingly to focus her energy on signing and how to make the most monstrous sounds possible for an eight-month-old. She will get super excited when I'm feeding her and will start grunting and flapping her arms like she wants to fly out of her high chair. I have to trick her with silly dances and songs to get the spoon in her mouth while she's grinning at her ridiculous mama. After babbling pretty consistently on the /b/ and /d/ sounds a few weeks/months back, Del has now started to play with all kinds of nonlinguistic sounds. Or rather, non English sounds, such as tongue clicking and velar frication and raspberries and lip popping and "yayayayaYA!" She has started to produce some variegated, or varied, babbling, such as "badaga," where she alternates between different consonants but stays on the same vowel. She makes the /k/ (as in "key") sound often now, along with /g/ (as in "go"), and a laterally lisped /s/ (similar to the sound in "see" but said like Sylvester from Looney Tunes).

Her signing continues to astound me. I just can't get over the fact that this tiny human is already actively communicating in symbols. She has two signs that she uses very consistently, but she uses them in different ways. Her most common sign is "change," which she will initiate with us to let us know she needs to be changed. She also signs it while she is being changed and waits for affirmation from us, then smiles. She signs "milk," but not yet as a request. She will identify what it means by signing it often while she's nursing, but she hasn't initiated it yet to let me know she's hungry. She does that by panting and laughing maniacally as she grabs at the front of my blouse! Just another form of communication! Gotta say I'm looking forward to her growing out of that one.

I have videos to share, just having a bit of difficulty getting them up for various computer-related annoyances. I'll have two or three clips posted by the end of the weekend.

Happy (almost) Friday to you all. Any fun plans for the weekend?

A Brief Interlude. . .

(Warning: links embedded in this post do NOT open in a new window)

Aloha! In the few days since my last post, Del has improved on her repertoire of signs and has added another. . ."poop"!! Mommy couldn't be more proud! She was signing it to me clear as can be yesterday while she was very obviously dealing with a little bit of gastric distress. She had the orientation of the sign a little confused, but the handshapes and motion of the sign were both correct. (click here for the ASL sign for "poop") Del's "milk" sign is now made almost the correct way, by clenching and unclenching her vertically held fist. The exception is that unlike the ASL sign, which has the thumb wrapped over the fingers, (click here for the ASL sign for "milk") Del holds her thumb up in the air and just clenches and releases the other four fingers. She seems to have had an "aha!" moment with her signing and is now very earnestly playing with her hands, changing shapes, moving them in different ways and directions, holding them at different angles and studying them carefully. She seems to be as fascinated with her language development as I am! I don't have a new video to post but I'll work on capturing "poop". . .it's cute as can be!

I think now would be a good time for me to give a brief overview of the parameters of ASL so as I start to talk more and more about things like movement and handshape, you will be crystal clear as to what I mean and how it applies to whatever aspect of ASL acquisition I'm talking about.

ASL Parameters
Parameters are how we describe the phonemes (or smallest unit of meaning) of ASL and how we differentiate signs from each-other. When two signs are the same except for one parameter, we call them a minimal pair. This means that there is only a minimal difference between how the signs are produced, and that the minimal difference between the signs (e.g., a variation in the handshape, location, movement or palm orientation of the signs) is a phoneme.  We talked a while back about the smallest unit of meaning in English (or any spoken language) being a sound produced by the articulators in one's mouth. Well, in ASL (or any manual language) the smallest unit of meaning is in the shapes and movements of one's hands. Let's clarify these parameters a little further.

1. Handshape - the shape that one or both hands make during the production of a linguistic sign. Changing the shape of one's hand while keeping all other aspects of a sign the same can create a minimal pair in ASL. For example, the sign for "please" is made by rubbing small circles on the chest with an " open B" handshape. If you keep everything the same but change the "open B" handshape to an "S", the sign now means "sorry." (See here for a video of 40 ASL handshapes and related signs).

2. Location - where in space or on the body (or a combination of the two) the sign is produced. Changing the location of a sign but keeping all other aspects the same creates a minimal pair. For example, the "five" handshape means "mother" if it is signed with the thumb on the chin and "father" if it is signed with the thumb on the forehead. 

3. Movement - any movement completed by one or both hands while producing a linguistic sign. This movelent can be uni- or bi-directional; it can be either a one-time or repeated motion; movements can be paths drawn through the air, shakes, wiggles, rotations, or bounces. (Static signs on the other hand have no motion and are produced in one location. Some examples of static signs are all of the alphabet signs except for"J" and "Z," which involve movement). Changing the movement of a sign can create a minimal pair. For example, the "five" handshape means "mother" when signed with the thumb on the chin with a very subtle bouncing motion. Keeping everything else the same, but moving the hand away from the chin and down in two short movements means "grandmother."

4. Palm Orientation - which way the palm faces during the production of a sign. Changing palm orientation can create a new sign. For example, when signing "my" the hand is in an "open B" shape facing the chest of the signer. By keeping all other parameters the same but facing the palm outward, the sign now mean "your."

5. Facial Expression/Non-Manual Markers(NMM) - this fifth parameter is not always included in descriptions of ASL parameters, but since NMMs are used linguistically in ASL I am going to include it in my description. This parameter includes the facial expression one makes while producing a sign, shoulder raising, torso orientation, mouthing, and head tilting. For example, a "yes/no" question is always asked with the eyebrows raised, whereas "WH" questions (who, which, where, when, why) are asked with the brows furrowed down and together. So if you were talking about someone named Chris, your listener could sign "girl?" with eyebrows raised, meaning "is Chris a girl?" Conversely they could sign "who girl?" with brows furrowed. (This is not an example of a minimal pair because we have to sign "who" to get the full meaning across).

If you are looking for more information or videos, YouTube is full of great informational ASL videos. I'll do my best to post links as well.

It's cool and crisp this morning on the lazy weekend after Thanksgiving. Del will be up soon and then it's off to the Farmer's market for fresh fish and vegetables, warm baked bread. Happy day to you and yours!

Exploration

One of the many things that has always fascinated me about language is how fluid it is. It runs fluidly from the lips and hands of its native speakers and signers; it is acquired fluidly as the baby's coos turn to babbles to words, and as the baby's perspective changes from horizontal to vertical; it changes fluidly from one region to the next, from one time to another; language is the sacred fluid - the life-blood so to speak - of what sets us humans apart from the rest of Earth's creatures. Language allows for one to flow more serenely within the foreign walls of another's culture or time; it gives voice to the fluid mercurial emotions that pepper our days, our minds; language runs like so much water through the woven histories of our species, repelling or uniting our ancestors along the often pride-filled lines of language identity. Without language, there would be no poetry, no algorithms, no fairy tales or creation myths.

I was thinking about fluidity earlier today as I was watching Del try on half a dozen new handshapes and wondering how I have managed to already miss so much of her language development despite my close attention and interest. It can't be helped. . .it's because language changes so fast and there are no starts and pauses. . .it just goes and it does not stop. Since my last post it has become clear to Daddy F and I that Del is signing several things consistently, and that we (her slow parents) are likely just catching onto something she's been doing for a couple weeks now. Since we are so accustomed to certain linguistic handshapes and signs, we unconsiously attend to familiar signs that she creates more than the "made up" ones. But those made up ones are Del's way of signing right now, and if she's signing something with intent then it's a sign.

So far we think she's telling us she needs to be changed (by signing an approximation of "inept" as seen in the beginning of the video), that she wants "more," that she would like some "milk," and that she is "all done." We're keeping a careful eye on those signs that we believe she has assigned meaning to in order to figure out for sure what she's trying to tell us. What is for sure is that Del has discovered language and the power of her voice and her hands, and there is no turning back. She is destined to have a lot to say if her constant chatter has anything to say about it!

My favorite part of this video is when Del snatches the spoon away from me fast as can be and then holds it out of my reach and signs what looks like one mighty sassy "all done." I'm sure it's all coincidence but it's still funny to think she's already one-upping me!

I'm fascinated with watching Del play with some of the parameters of sign: palm orientation, handshape, location. I wonder when children who are acquiring a signed language start using only signs that are native to that language, such as a child learning a spoken language will eventually stop making sounds that are not in that native language.


I hope you all have a very happy and satisfying Thanksgiving. I'm thankful today for my healthy loving family. What are you thankful for?

Eeny Meenie Miny Moe. . .

Hello there. It's been a little while. How silly of me to think I would find even twenty minutes of quiet time each week to sit and make some kind of cohesive sense of the chaos and wonder of watching my child grow. It's not that I don't have any down time. I spend a couple hours in the evenings doing my own thing after Del has gone to sleep, but it's harder than I thought to put that time into action and converge onto the laptop and try to write intelligible things! So here I am yet again, late enough that I should be sleeping but I'm not because I have to share the video I managed to capture earlier this evening and put down some thoughts about motor development.

With a hearing child of hearing parents, we talk about that child's motor development and language development as two separate but parallel entities. Those fascinating and wonderful motor milestones checked off: reaching, picking up a block, transferring it to the other hand, reaching to the side, picking up small objects with the thumb and forefinger (also called a pincer grasp), pointing. Meanwhile, the language milestones run their course: cooing,  screeching and growling, babbling, turn-taking, first words. These paths overlap and weave their way through the first year of the child's life, as the child delights all those around her with her amusing journey from neophyte to expert on each milestone reached. It's quite clear with such a child that a wave is a wave and "ba ba ba" is babbling, and that a pincer grasp is a pincer grasp, and "doggy" is a first word.

Not so much with the kid who is acquiring a manual language.

For Del, and all the other children exposed to a signed language as infants, the line between motor development and language development is not clear because they require the same skill set, the same body parts. For Del, a wave might be her way of saying hello or her attempt at signing "all done" or "change." Or what looks like a pincer grasp could be a pincer grasp, or it could be her attempt at the letter "G." Or perhaps she's trying to tell us something is tiny by signing "little." (See below for all of the letter handshapes for ASL)

(Caveat: The laryngeal and lingual movements required for the production of speech sounds are fine motor movements as well, but what I'm speaking to here are fine manual motor skills, or those that require the use of the hands and fingers).

I realize that we can tell a true pincer grasp from her attempts to communicate (mostly because she has an object she's trying to pick up at the time), but the point is that the paths of language and fine motor development overlap and rely on each other when it comes to manual languages. I find myself wondering if fine motor development milestones are reached in a different order or rate with children acquiring a signed language, seeing as language development is contingent upon fine motor skill with sign language whereas the two are separate with a spoken language. I'm also curious if it's easier to determine a child's handedness earlier if they are acquiring a signed language, instead of having to wait until they start drawing or writing. Are native signers more dexterous with both hands than those who don't use their hands to communicate? Is there a higher incidence of functional ambidextrousness in the deaf community than among hearing or non-signing persons? So many questions, so precious little time to search for answers.

Today's video shows Del using her newly mastered pincer grasp to pick up her beloved cheerios. At one point she takes a cheerio from between her thumb and forefinger with the readied pincer of her other hand. So far we aren't sure about her handedness, but she seems to prefer the right one when sign-babbling with one hand. It will be interesting to watch as she figures that out.

Please enjoy the video, and don't hesitate to share your thoughts and/or experiences.

With a flick of the wrist. . .

Thanks to our dear friend "Mo," who takes care of Del from time to time, we have video footage of the new hand-babbling style that our little lady has started to use. So what do you think. . .is this acquisition of palm orientation awareness?

Last night Daddy F was talking with a friend of his while I sat with Del on my lap on the kitchen counter and watched their conversation. Del was enthralled with their hands, staring at each of them in turn while they went back and forth in their chat. At one point, when there was a pause in their conversation, Del took her turn by rotating her hands around and around in tight circles for a few seconds. Then she waited while Daddy F said something to her, to which she responded with another conversational turn! It is so fun watching her participate so actively with communication.

As for her vocal communication, she continues to screech extremely loudly and at a very high pitch, something I'm hoping she trades in for a less ear-splitting kind of vocalization sometime soon. I like to encourage all of her linguistic exploration, but that one is starting to hurt my ears. It's also not something the diners at nearby tables seem to appreciate when we're out for breakfast or lunch, and I haven't yet been successful teaching her about her "inside voice."

Could it be?

I'm sorry to say that I don't have a video to accompany this post, but I had to write to share with you that Del signed her first sign last weekend when we were camping. And for those of you who know me well, you'll understand why I'm so thrilled that her first sign was. . .TREE! I was hesitant to claim "first sign!" because it just seems to early for her to be communicating in that way with us already, but both Daddy F and I saw her do it not once but twice, and we both agreed that she meant it. So there you have it: first sign at 7 months and one week of age.

Her hand-babbling conversations continue, one of which I showed on video last post, with rotating arms and hands drawing tight circles in the signing space in front of her body. What's fascinating about this new development in her signing is how different and distinct it is from that other kind of sign babble. She now will also hold her hand (or hands) up, very still, and rotate her wrist slowly, so that her palm faces out then in, out then in, out then in. She watches her hands while she does this, changing the shape of her hand slightly from an open hand to an L shape as she rotates from palm facing out to palm facing in. She seems to have turned a corner in her awareness of what sign is and how she can participate, and now watches our hands intently as we sign to her. She now waves in this manner at times, to both greet people and say goodbye, and when she shows off her new movements (not on demand, not suprisingly!), she is obviously very proud of what she's doing and aware that it's pretty dang cool, this language stuff.

Fine motor language skills are developing right along with the other motor tricks she's learning. She has started to use a pincer grasp to pick up anything and everything small that she can find (and try to eat) while almost-crawling around on the ground, and has chosen the classic index-finger point as her go-to hand shape for exploring the tactile world around her. She's begun to explore new-found objects with her eyes in addition to her mouth, and will hold a novel toy or kitchen utensil at arms length, turning in this way and that so she can check it out from all angles. Pretty neat to watch, in addition to buying me a little time to avoid disaster. For example, earlier today I came back into the living room from the bathroom to find her holding a small button and looking at it very carefully, giving me just the right amount of time to grab it from her before she decided that she also wanted to see what it tasted like. Two weeks ago she wouldn't have cared what it looked like, she would have just popped it into her mouth just like everything else she got her hands on.

I'm going to try my best to get Dels' new wrist rotation on video and post it. I'm curious if this is signifying that she is acquiring the palm orientation parameter of ASL. More about that soon. . .my next post will be a basic level crash course in the phonology of English and ASL. But now is not the time. Now is the time when I eat leftover carrot cake and finish my glass of wine before going to bed at the super-cool working-mommy time of 9:00pm. Amazing how dramatically my priorities have changed in the last, I don't know, seven and a half months or so!

Time Flies When You Can't Keep Up!

It's almost my bed time, but I have to get some of these ideas and notes down in black and white before I blink and Del has entered yet another new stage that I won't find time to document. Consistency is key in parenthood. . .or so I've been told. . .and it's apparently something I'm still attempting to achieve! Let me touch on some of the milestones we've checked off since last time I posted.

Vocal Development
Del continues with her screeches, squeals, and growls. She is also having a lot of fun playing around with the sound her saliva makes when she sucks air in through the sides of her teeth. This is another non-linguistic sound - like raspberries or screeching - that I like to call her "voiceless ingressive lateral salival frication." If you don't understand why I call it that, consider yourself lucky; it means you're not a big dork like me! Del has added another (somewhat terrifying) non-linguistic sound to her vocal repertoire. She likes to suck in air through tightly constricted vocal folds, creating a sound that closely resembles that of a baby gasping for breath. With the whooping cough scare running rampant in California, I was admittedly freaked out when I started hearing her make this noise. After careful observation of both her overall health and the instances where she made this unfortunate noise (unfortunate because she loves it and yet I'm left questioning whether or not to rush her to the doctor), I've concluded that she's just plain having fun with all of her noise-making parts, and most likely delighting in the reaction this particular noise gets out of her mama.

Del continues to play around with canonical babbling (meaning she babbles repeatedly on the same consonant-vowel syllable such as /ba/), and in addition to the sounds mentioned in my previous post, she has played around with the phonemes /f/ (as in "fun") and /ŋ/ (as in "sing").  The /ŋ/ sound is not used at the beginning of syllables in English (like it is in some languages, such as in the Vietnamese last name "Nguyen"), which has not yet prevented Del from using it in that position when she babbles on the syllable /ŋa/. This is an interesting indicator, suggesting that at seven months of age she has not yet mastered the syllable structure of her native spoken language. Research has suggested that infants can distinguish between the phonemes of their native language as early as four months of age (called categorical perception), and that around six months they begin to hone in on the sounds that are used in their native language as distinct from the sounds (and the rules governing how those sounds are used) of other languages. In other words, Del may understand on some level that /ŋ/ is not a sound used at the beginning of words in English, but her developing mouth and mind are still playing around with it in all ways possible and will figure out the sound's true linguistic role in English somewhere later along the way (dear readers: references and more information on this subject would be greatly appreciated!)

Del is playing around a lot more with pitch variation on prolonged vowel sounds, and has begun to "sing" along with me when I'm singing. She will participate in conversation with me, taking 4-5 conversational turns with whatever noise she's making at the time, and gets especially excited when I'm talking and signing at the same time. She recently engaged a friend of hers who is the exact same age (born within an hour of each-other) in a conversation. The two of them talked back and forth for three conversational turns before they turned their attention to other things. I was amazed that our tiny babies had such confidence and control with their language, and that they obviously didn't need us big clumsy adults to interfere when they wanted to have a nice chat! 

Manual Development
Del is absolutely delighted by her fingers. She will often bring her fingertips together at a quiet time during the day, such as right before a nap or during nursing, and gently alternate fingers as she calmly continues to gain dexterity and speed with her fine motor skills. It's fascinating to watch her manual play for linguistic signs, wondering what she makes of the two languages in her life, and what it is she's trying to say to us when she makes the "F" handshape (palm facing out with thumb and index finger connected in a circle) three times in the span of a few minutes and presents it to us with glee and pride. We joke that it's because her first sign is her daddy's name sign (which is formed with the "F" handshape), but realistically we have not for certain seen a first sign yet. Both Daddy F and I reported to each-other on the same day that we think she signed "daddy" with an "L" handshape on her forehead (the real sign for "daddy" is all fingers extended with the thumb on the forehead), but we're not going so far as to claim first sign quite yet; I guess we're not completely convinced of it's linguistic intent. . .either that or we're in denial of how fast our baby is growing and learning! At any rate, it's clear that Del is aware of her signing space, and various hand shapes, and is now showing signs of awareness for placement of signs (i.e., her forehead).

Del becomes very obviously and immediately excited when she sees someone signing to her on the VP. The video below shows just how delighted she is by her participation with signed communication, and exhibits a few rounds of turn-taking in her manual-babbling "conversation" with her grandpa. 

Hand babbling "evidence" ?

Not a month into this blog and I've already fallen behind my weekly post commitment! Ah well, such is the life of a new (working) mother. Here I sit at 8:30, ready to put some thoughts to type, and it feels like midnight. . .or later.

After reading back through my previous post, I realize I have to offer one more disclaimer, and to warn of many more likely to come! It is intimidating to write about something so detailed and intense, and about which i admittedly am no expert. I imagine in the course of this blog's life that I will have to put my proverbial foot in my mouth more than a few times. This disclaimer is an important one that will hopefully save me from having to defend myself against accurate accusations that there is no such thing as the typical child. The disclaimer is this: when I write about a sound "typically" being used first in babbling, or that a child will "typically" learn one particular sound before another, please take those statements with a big fat grain of salt. While there are well-documented patterns in English language acquisition, there is also a great deal of individual variation, and most children are idiosyncratic in some way or another in what they say or do when compared with other children their age. For example, although Del started using /b/ as her first consistently babbled phoneme, which is in line with so-called typical phoneme acquisition for English, she also started making "raspberries" after she started babbling in earnest, which is opposite of the typical sound exploration we tend to observe.

At any rate, if you come across a statement that you disagree with, or a question of mine that you have an answer for (even if the answer is just a guess!), please share. If you have a random comment about one of your children, or your students, or about something vaguely language or baby or Deaf or new-parent related, share!

And with that, it's my time to share. . .another video! This one is brief because I am having a very hard time catching Del in her wild hand-babbling giddiness. When she's vocal-babbling or screeching in the other room I can hear her, and I run in with the video camera to try and catch her before she sees me and stops mid-screech. Since I can't hear her hand-babbling, I'm quite limited as to how much footage I can get of her exploring language with her hands. I'm further limited because she tends to hand-babble when she's either talking to Daddy F's family on the VP, or first thing in the morning while we're slowly waking up in bed, or at night when it's dark and she's lying down, quietly mesmerizing herself with her manual dexterity before she falls asleep. 

It's interesting to me that at six months, Del already seems to have a sense of when to use her voice and when to use her hands when attempting to communicate. She still demonstrates crossover when she vocalizes with Daddy F, but I think it's partly because Daddy F uses his voice a lot when they play and talk to each-other, and he makes silly sounds with her more often than I do. She hand-babbles with me because I both talk and sign to her, so it makes sense that she would use both communication modalities with me during her language development. I do notice lately, however, that when she is sitting with us talking to someone on VP that she rarely vocalizes and tends to get very active and excited with her manual babbling. If you are Deaf and have a hearing child, when did your child seem to "get" that s/he should only sign with you and other Deaf individuals, and speak when talking to someone hearing? It's a fascinating part of language development for bi-modal bilinguals. I have two friends who are Deaf with a hearing daughter. She both signs and speaks beautifully, but in all the time I have spent with her, she refuses to engage in spoken communication with me. Is it because she associates me with deafness because I'm usually the only hearing person and I am signing along with the other Deaf adults? Is it because she prefers to sign and will only speak when the her conversation partner doesn't know ASL? I have so much curiosity about these things and am eager to hear your stories and perspectives on the subject.

This is a (very!) limited example of what I consider to be Del's version of hand-babbling. The intro and exit parts of the video are her waving, with the middle portion demonstrating a little bit of her hand and finger play. I'll keep working on capturing a better clip with more finger play (that's my favorite thing in the world to watch but unfortunately her favorite time to do it is when she's breastfeeding!), maybe by keeping the camera close at hand when we have family on the other end of our VP. She's very astute and tends to stop doing whatever it is I'm trying to capture as soon as she notices me with the camera, so I'll have to improve my stealth-mode recording tactics, and quick! It doesn't help that our Flip video camera closely resembles her very favorite toy. . .my cell phone.

Ba-ba-ba babbling!

Before I begin I want to clarify some linguistic terms. When we talk about sounds in language, we use the term phoneme to mean the smallest unit of sound that can convey meaning. For example, both b and p are English phonemes because "big" and "pig" mean two different things. When we write about phonemes we represent them in slashed lines, such that the phoneme for the sound in "mom" is written as /m/. As I talk about the sounds that Del is using I will use this linguistic convention to make things less confusing for me to write about as her language skills gain complexity. If something needs additional clarification, please let me know in a comment so that I can assure to the best of my abilities that every post I write is accessible to those with no prior knowledge of linguistics. Also, I have not yet been able to figure out how to add subtitles for those of you who are Deaf or HOH (which is not a huge deal right now because Del isn't yet talking!), but that is something I will be looking into and hopefully adding to future videos.

Now, onto babbling! Babbling in English typically starts with bilabial sounds, which are produced by bringing both lips together such as for the sounds /m/ and /b/. These sounds are easy for a baby to make because the lips are fairly large articulators, or parts of the mouth used for creating speech sounds, such as the lips, tongue, alveolar ridge, velum, etc (see diagram above for reference points for the various articulators). Bilabial sounds occur early in babbling development because using them for sounds production doesn't require a great deal of fine motor skill. The bilabial sounds that babies usually babble with first are voiced phonemes /b/ and /m/, which are produced with vocal cords vibration, as opposed to the voiceless phoneme /p/ which is produced without vocal cord vibration. To get a feeling for what this means, put your hand on your throat and hum on an /m/ sound. That vibration you feel is your voice turning on; your vocal cords vibrating. Now keep your hand on your throat and repeat a soft /p/ sound; see, no vibration!

In typical babbling development, /b/ will usually precede /p/ . I believe this is because it's easier for babies to simply turn on their voice for /a/ (all vowel phonemes in English are voiced) and then bring their lips together and apart to create the syllable /ba/, than it is for them to time the vibration of their vocal cords for a voiceless+voiced syllable like /pa/. Babies also tend to alternate early on in babbling between nasal phonemes, or sounds made with air flowing through the nose such as /m/ and /n/, and oral phonemes, or sounds made with air flowing through the mouth such as /b/ and /d/.  The reason that nasal and oral phonemes such as /m/ and /b/ are often interchangeably babbled is because these young babies have not yet mastered control of their velum, the soft flap of tissue way at the back of the soft palate that opens and closes the doorway between the oral and nasal cavities. The video posted here demonstrates our baby's (pretty darn adorable) version of this learning curve.

Del started her English babbling experience by exploring bilabial sounds /m/ and /b/ right around five months of age, give or take a week. This video was (luckily!) captured very early in her babbling career, for which I'm grateful because it demonstrates that she's still working on the timing of her breath support and the movement of her velum opening and closing, and is inconsistent with the sounds she creates. She seems to be gearing herself up to make sounds by moving her lips and tongue without any vocalization prior to the babbling. The video was taken about two weeks ago (on September 7th), which any fellow parent can attest is a lifetime in the rapid development of an infant! She is currently babbling more consistently with /b/ and /m/ sounds, and to date has also used the phonemes /n/ (as in "no"), /h/ (as in "hi"), /d/ (as in "dye"), /g/ (as in "guy"), /w/ (as in "why"), /j/ (as in "yes"), and the occasional non-linguistic "raspberry" that babies seem to love making so much! She also frequently squeals, screeches, and growls, delighting in the sheer noise she is able to create. Her vocalizing still occurs, but less frequently now that she has discovered the magical fun of consonants.

Her ASL babbling started around four months with frequent hand waving and finger play. As she grows, her hand movements have become smaller and more precise, with more of the movements occurring within the linguistic signing space in front of her body. She has recently started to experiment more with fine motor skills when hand babbling, and will hold her hands up in front of her face while she's playing quietly by herself and turn them around and make various hand shapes with one or both hands. To date we have seen her make the handshapes for the letters "A," "N," "S," "T," "L," and many of her own invention. She also will hold both hands up and rotate them around each other as if she is signing, "sign." My personal favorite is when she completes some kind of Del-invented hand sign and then holds it up to show us with the widest, most proud smile on her face. Yesterday Daddy F, Del and I were out for breakfast at a local greasy spoon. Del was sitting in her stroller, observing all the lights and lines around us while Daddy F and I chatted and ate our breakfast. There was a man sitting alone in the booth next to us who was exchanging smiles with Del. At one point she held up her hand with fingers spread and palm facing him and waved it a little - a classic wave. Then she made an "L" with her thumb and pointer finger, and pointed right at him, precise as could be! The only way it could have been better is if she had winked at him.

The first stage of English: Vocalizing

This video was shot on July 7th, when Adelaide was just under four months old. It demonstrates her vocalizing (or cooing). She hadn't yet found her lips or tongue to start making consonant sounds with her articulators, but was having a great time playing with her voice day in and day out. Seems she is bound to be just as vocal as her mama. . .uh-oh! Here she is talking to me as she soothed her aching gums with a frozen teether while on vacation in Philadelphia. Incidentally, her two bottom teeth showed up just a few days later!

Adelaide's ASL development has been harder for me to recognize due to my unfamiliarity with early signing development and my reliance on my ears to key in on language, but she did start flapping her arms and touching her fingers together often sometime between three and four months. This is something we have not observed in other hearing babies (from hearing families) her age. I'm curious to hear about your experiences with ASL "babbling" and what that looked like, how it progressed, and how you identified it.

And so it begins. . .

I promised myself that I would start this blog the day Del turned six months, and I somehow managed to arrive on the scene a mere 24 hours tardy. But before I launch into what this blog is all about, let me share a little background info on us.

I am professionally a Speech Language Pathologist with an undergraduate background in Linguistics and a life-long love affair with all things language. I am hearing and know four languages (English, fluently; Spanish and American Sign Language (ASL) conversationally; German, poorly). My exposure to and immersion into the Deaf community began over three years ago when I met Daddy F. Daddy F is professionally an ASL teacher and rehabilitation counselor with an undergraduate background in Deaf studies and ASL linguistics. He is Deaf from a Deaf family and communicates primarily in ASL. He vocalizes within our home to get our attention or when playing with Del, but he doesn't use speech as a functional means of communication. Therefore, our daughter is the product of a hearing mother (me) and a Deaf father (Daddy F) and because she herself is hearing, she will be roughly equally exposed to both ASL and English.

So far her direct language exposure is more ASL than English because the language of our home is ASL, she has been home with her daddy most days while mommy is at work, and she has had ample exposure to Deaf and hard-of-hearing (HOH) friends and family both in person and on videophone (VP). Of course I talk and sing with her often, and she receives the ambient English (and Spanish!) exposure when we're out in the community that is part of the incidental language education of every hearing child.

This blog was borne of an intense curiosity on my part about how Del's language will develop. Because I know little of ASL developmental milestones for hearing children of Deaf adults, and nothing of simultaneous ASL/English bilingual development, I thought it would be fun to dive in and do a casual case study on our daughter while reaching out into cyberspace for information and insight into the many interesting factors at work here.

I am nowhere near an expert on child language development, English, ASL, or bilingualism. Rather, there is SO MUCH I don't know that I am inspired to learn as much as possible about these topics - hopefully with your help. My primary goal for this blog is to gather together a community of people interested in the same things so that we can build a forum of idea sharing and resource building. It will be informal and anecdotal, but the idea is that we will all learn something along the way. So I invite you to be an active participant in the days and discussions to follow, and to invite me into the worlds of knowledge that only you know. And so it begins. . .