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Post by Tone on May 23, 2008 20:44:16 GMT
>"a trifle affected"<I'm left wondering what effected that affect on the poor trifle. Tone
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Post by Barry on May 23, 2008 22:38:37 GMT
Nah, it's a trifle with ideas above its station; green cherries on top, possibly. Great name for a pub:
The Trifle Affected.
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ianm
New Member
Posts: 20
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Post by ianm on May 24, 2008 4:30:29 GMT
One intensely irritating use of the third person is by parents of young children when talking to said children: "Give Mummy the spoon" instead of "Give me the spoon"; "Let Daddy give Billy a piggyback" instead of "Let me give you a piggyback". After carefully training their children incorrectly, at some point they start equally carefully untraining them. I'm proud to say that I raised three children and never used such constructions. They had no problems understanding "I", "me" and "you" and were spared the unlearning process. I almost, but not quite, managed to train my wife to avoid all babytalk as well.
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Post by Verbivore on May 24, 2008 6:03:21 GMT
Anathema in my household (when the kids were new-ish)! "Babytalk" was strictly verboten of adults - resident or visiting. Don't if that had any influence on my sons' speech, but from the very first they - now in their 30s - have always spoken very well - grammatically, lexically, and enunciationally (?) - but managing to do so without sounding anything but "natural".
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Post by Trevor on May 24, 2008 21:29:05 GMT
That's something I found myself instinctively doing when talking to my son despite never liking hearing others do it. I mentioned it on our family blog and a few comments seemed to support it as a good practice (post and comments here), but I'm not convinced. I have, however, become perfectly comfortable doing it now.
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Post by Verbivore on May 25, 2008 9:26:44 GMT
Referring to oneself in the third person ("give it to Mummy") is not part of what I consider baby talk - although that is the way we set labels on ourselves for a developing child to copy / adopt.
What I meant by "baby talk" is is the goo goo horsey-worsey doggy-woggy coochy-coo style of nonsense. It teaches the child to use silly - and commonly longer, more difficult - names than are necessary, all of which later have to be unlearned.
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Post by amanda on May 25, 2008 16:14:44 GMT
Babbling to babies is known as 'motherese' and is apparently a complex two-way communication between adult and child, according to research. The patterns of speech and changes in the pitch of the voice are performed instinctively by (most!) parents and this is the same across divers societies and cultures. Even mother monkeys do it, although to date there hasn't been a study into whether it irritates the hell out of other (usually childless) monkeys. Interestingly, there is such a thing as 'visual motherese'; parents of deaf children are taught to adapt their signs, and their facial and body movements so that they can communicate in a manner with which babies can more readily asscociate. I'm not sure if maternal burbling has any direct effect on language development. I speak with my dog like that and he still can't talk.
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Post by Tone on May 25, 2008 20:54:55 GMT
Amanda,
Has someone been reading Pinker, then?
Tone
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Post by amanda on May 26, 2008 8:49:46 GMT
G-E.the medical profession's favourite verb is 'pop' ('just pop yourself onto the couch'; 'just pop your shirt off for me', etc.), which, alas, falls into the same form of address. I've just been reading Sky online news (life doesn't get better than this!) They report that the Phoenix Mars contraption has landed. Apparently it hurtled through the hostile Martian atmosphere at over 12,000 mph and then popped out a parachute to slow itself down. Easy. It also took a photo of one of its leg's on the planet's surface.
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Post by amanda on May 26, 2008 9:10:19 GMT
Has someone been reading Pinker, then? A couple of years ago I did a lot of reading around John Bowlby's attachment theory, which led on to the large amount of research into so-called motherese. I haven't read any Pinker but I should have done!
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Post by Geoff on May 26, 2008 10:24:37 GMT
They report that the Phoenix Mars contraption has landed. Tut, tut, Amanda. 'Contraption' indeed ...
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Post by Paul Doherty on May 26, 2008 11:07:16 GMT
Good word, contraption, amusing!
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Post by Pete on May 26, 2008 11:48:41 GMT
Shades of Heath Robinson, perhaps?
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Post by Tone on May 26, 2008 20:13:47 GMT
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Post by Tone on May 26, 2008 20:14:51 GMT
Amanda, >I haven't read any Pinker but I should have done!<
You should, you should.
Tone
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