On Language Acquisition
Harvey knows a lot of words. We started counting his vocabulary last month, but we stopped when the list of words he can draw out of his brain without prompting crossed 100. He learns more words every day, but more exciting is the way he's starting to string words together into rudimentary sentences. Like he'll says "Mama hat on" to mean "I want to put mama's hat on." Or "Outside car cow" to mean a string of occurrences that lead us to the farm.
Lately he's been working through some tricky points of naming. He know knows, for example, that our family pet is both "da" and "Wasgoo," and he's worked out that other neighborhood dogs are "da" but not "Wasgoo." He can also point to a banana and say "nana" followed by "piece," and he knows that he's both "Harbey" and "baby" but can recognize other non-Harbey babies when they pass by. Which, I don't know, seems more impressive to me than being able to point out leaves, sticks and pine-cones on our daily walks. The latter seems more like a parlor trick. By now we get it already, you know a lot of words. Time to start really talking.
Of course I'm proud of my little chatter box, and I'd like to take some credit for the constant flow of conversation I keep him engaged in throughout the day. On the other hand, it's probably just genetics, his dad and I spoke just as early when we were kids, and in the absence of so much stimulation Harvey would probably talk to his trucks with the same amount of conviction.
Anyway, it's all very exciting, to see Harvey growing into a little boy who can speak and joke and reason, push the stroller, feed the dog (with help), and try his hardest to do everything we grown ups do. I for one have no sentimental attachment to his babyhood. You go on and grow up, little man. You only get awesomer every day.
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You're right, learning the hierarchy of objects is a pretty big deal. I saw a pretty cool talk recently by a computational cognitive scientist about how the brain might learn these structures. Watch it here in your oodles of free time.