Deixis

Sep. 28th, 2006 03:11 pm
radegund: (swans)
[personal profile] radegund
Set-up 1: The Oyster has been a little gorilla for much of the afternoon. Mama and K (his grandmother) are big gorillas. Great satisfaction is had from making statements such as "big gorilla putting little gorilla's wellies on", "big gorilla using a rake and little gorilla using a spade" (yes, we're still up to our ears in the garden project).

Set-up 2: The Oyster is beginning to use possessive adjectives, but he hasn't figured out deixis yet, so he tends to use "my" to refer to things that belong to the person he's talking to ("put it on my plate - no, MY plate" [points at Mama's plate]).

Oyster: Unny put the stone in my bucket.
Mama: Yes, that's right, you put it in your bucket.
Oyster: No, my bucket!
Mama: Yes, but the thing is, if you say "my bucket", I say "your bucket" - because thaaaaat's deixis, boy!
Oyster: Daa-day-igah-g'illa!
Mama: My apologies. You're right, of course. That's deixis, gorilla.

You've got to get these things right, you know.

[This is cross-posted to Who Teaches Whom?, [livejournal.com profile] ailbhe's and my child-led learning blog.]
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org

Profile

radegund: (Default)
radegund

September 2013

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425 262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags