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"What does he said?"

01/14/04 | by [mail] | Categories: family/personal

Emma is always saying silly things that make me laugh, but I noticed that one of them actually makes a lot of sense. When she wants you to repeat what someone said, she'll say "What does he said?" It sounds very strange, but it's actually pretty smart and shows that her language aquisition is advancing admirably. Consider the process that she must have gone through to reach this point. First, she would phrase it this way:

What he say? Then she added the past tense inflection
What he said? Then she picked up the strange aspect of English wherein we add the helping verb 'do'
What does he said? But she is placing the past tense inflection on the verb instead of the helping verb. So she is only one step away from the correct SAE usage:
What did he say? To me that seems pretty smart.

Now if only she could stop pooping her pants.

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3 comments

This is what happens when you are a linguistics major and you have a child :)


brendoman [Visitor]http://brendoman.com01/14/04 @ 10:35

. . . and you don’t use your degree in your job.


danny [Visitor]http://danny.brendoman.com01/14/04 @ 10:50

I forgot something. A few months ago she was saying “What’d you say?” which is more correct, but she was using the phrase as a whole and didn’t know the rules of how to create the phrase. As she learns the rules, she is taking the phrase apart (and messing it up) in order to be able to understand it.


danny [Visitor]http://danny.brendoman.com01/14/04 @ 14:39


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