Babytalk (Part 2)

By Emmanuelle

First thing first. FEELINGS would like to express its appreciation for the calls, emails, and SMS from the regular readers of the hard copy and the webpage – Pangasinenses migrating to the nation’s thousands of islands, overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East and other places as strange, Filipino immigrants with Pangasinan in their hearts. And these would include the surfers here and abroad, the chance reader, and the namumulot o nang-aagaw lamang ng diaryo who send, nevertheless, their comments or opinions just as feelingly as the regulars.

Second thing is to answer one common inquiry. Yes, those were true stories. They are your true stories. Only your real names and some major items that would identify you as the storyteller were deleted, changed or altered. 

Third, Feelings has this reply to a regular reader who e-mailed her opinion regarding Babytalk of last week. She typed:  you constantly referred to the baby as the neuter pronoun “it”. I believe that it is wrong to refer to the baby the same way as we refer to a non-living thing, but I guess you must know better. Therefore, I shall defer to you as one defers to a grammatical whiz. Does it imply then that baby is to be rightfully referred to as “it”?

To which Feelings replies: the writer does not claim to be a “grammatical whiz”. In fact, she tries her very worst and her very best to get away with breaking almost all grammatical rules to be able to come out with Feelings just the way she likes it, just the way  you know it.

The third-person pronouns he or she is used for gender-assignment, whereas gender is a socially-assigned status. Since babies are not obliged to perform social roles until much later, therefore it is not required to address baby as he or she.  The word baby and its pronoun “it” in the first of the Babytalk series refers to a neutral classification of baby boy and baby girl. As far as Babytalk is concerned, the writer is not committing herself to a preference for any of the sexes.   

And so, we get down to the business of baby learning the spoken language.

According to a child’s developmental milestones as to language acquisition, a newborn baby learns the power of its vocals by crying if it’s not sleeping or guzzling milk. At one-month, it fists its hands, focuses its eyes and tries to produce throaty gurgling sounds. It is testing one-two-three are all my speaking tubes present and all accounted for?

At two months, it unfists its hands and, like the soprano getting to the basics, it vocalizes! though the sounds it produces may seem like incomprehensible noises. When talked to, it responds by pausing whatever it is doing. If it likes your face as you talk to it, it gives its first social smile. If it loves your face, it even goes farther. It laughs! 

At third month, when it’s not anticipating its next feeding time, it regards its two hands and tries to link these together.  It must enjoy linking appendages because it is during this time that it coos long musical vowel sounds. No consonants yet, just pretending it knows its aaeeiioouu.

At fourth and fifth month, with its good head control, it rolls over, reaches and grasps and transfers objects from one hand to another. It recognizes the voices of regular people around it and that of the more recognizable sounds of the rattle and the bell.

And at sixth month, as it learns to sit and chew, it begins to teach the adults what it likes and what it dislikes. It starts to babble its monosyllables, sometimes discriminately but more often deliberately.  As an example, please refer to Babytalk of last week.

The above are the first six months of the baby’s 18th months, the baby’s psycho-sexual or oral stage according to Freud, when baby obtains gratification through stimulation of the mouth as they suck and bite. Erikson disregards Freud dirty mind with his claim that it is during this psychosocial stage that baby learns to trust or mistrust, that his needs will be met by the world, especially the mother.

This writer likes Piaget’s theory of socioemotional development better, when he says that these months are the beginnings of the baby’s cognitive stage, where learning occurs through activity, exploration and manipulation of the environment, where motor and sensory impressions form the foundation of later learning.

On the other hand, having Inday warbling in Arabic, as well as English, Spanish, German and Greek might do wonders for her alaga. As yaya, she might yet make of it a linguist terrific, without the mother lifting a tongue to help!

(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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