Talk:2839: Language Acquisition

It is probably obvious to say it, but: If the person in the title text is the same person speaking in the pane, there's a contradiction here, since if your first words were the seven unique words in "these were my first words what were yours" ("were" is duplicated) then "I learned another word today bringing my total up to twelve " adds another ten (duplicating "my"), for a total of seventeen. Or nineteen if you count "vocabulary" and "update." I'm not sure what to make of this, since Randall is surely aware of it. Perhaps I miss a subtlety. Or maybe the title text is spoken by a different character. JohnHawkinson (talk) 21:43, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

The title text is often taken as coming from Randall. In the comic, Cueball is often a stand-in for Randall, but in this comic the text is coming from Baby Hairy. So the title text is contrasting the baby's first words with Randall's. Although they share the feature of being self-referential. Barmar (talk) 23:48, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

A friend of mine said that his child's first words were "isi, äiti, kondesaattori" (dad, mom, capacitor). 162.158.238.41 22:07, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Is the leftmost block schwa or upside down? The world may never know. Me^{[citation needed]} 22:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks like it could be an upside down "e" ? 172.70.207.89 23:07, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Strange that it's lowercase, if so, given that the other blocks are not*. "ab..e.." I could see for learning blocks, or "AB..E..". Perhaps even capital vowels, lower-everything-else (notwithstanding the implied pretext that a child of the age to learn basic block-stacking motor skills is also going to sufficiently benefit from a grounding in such 'advanced' and nuanced character-recognition), but not that.

* - Logistically, for the full unique set of (A..Za..z), perhaps paired by case on opposite sides, you'd need nine blocks at a minimum (and then room for two repeats/punctuations/perhaps-'@'-and-'&'?). Just three blocks is already insufficient for all-upper, so the tropish illustration/posed-photo of three actual "ABC" blocks** always makes you wonder if there's no Z, Y, X, etc. Although perhaps 'd'+'p' (lowercase) or 'M'+'W' (uppercase, or lower, with the right font), or maybe 'E'+'M' (different font/style) could help reduce the number of sides needed, allowing some context by orientation.

** - And oh-so-often, correctly orientated, correctly sequenced and facing the observer that the toddler is also facing, which implies both a complete understanding of the glyphs and a sense of self-vs-other. Which is not far off as improbable as the preverbal 'infant genius' somehow presenting "SYZYGY"/whatever. -- [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

If you're going to use the blocks for spelling things out, though, (rather than just learning the alphabet) you'd want the letters to appear in some sort of corpus frequency - so likely only one 'Z', 'Q', etc., but several 'A's, 'E's, and so on. 172.69.43.170 08:34, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

OTOH, the populating of a set of blocks (far more than three!) with IPA begs questions of what capitals A and B are doing there. Or then there's the intriguing idea that these blocks are to specifically hothouse the child in Predicate Logic ("A" can perhaps be there for/additionally for "∀", seen upside-down, though somethjng like "E" should at least be present for the "∃").

In short, odd child; likely already odder parents. Or ones that cobbled together blocks from different (second-hand, possibly incomplete) sets, as hand-me-downs, but that seems far too mundane an explanation for xKcD... ;) 172.71.242.219 00:39, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Azerbaijani has a capital schwa that looks like that: Ə 172.70.223.177 00:50, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

If the child's first number is "twelve," I don't see why their second number should not be "two point seven one eight two eight one eight two eight." JohnHawkinson (talk) 01:37, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Re the rules (barring the contradiction said above): If Day 1 was "Another", Day 2 can't be "I learned" or "vocabulary word" unless the child skips some days and isn't learning at a rate of one word per day. If it's A Word A Day, your options must be just one other word - so in the example case, "word" could work to make "another word" work. 162.158.2.39 23:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

First word could be "I" (or "Learned") for "I learned" on the second day. I don't know the intention(s) of the person(s) who put together that section, but multiple paths to the dozen-word sentence are possible, perhaps it just needs to be indicated that these are not of the same sequence.

There'll be many 'valid' sequences, with lesser or greater intermediate grammatical validity. 12!*(11!*10!*..3!*2!*1!) potential combinations. The 12! being the order of discovery; the other factorials are the orders of all intermediate sequences being rendered, but we actually know what sequence emerged from the 12! possibly renderings of the final set, so no need to repermutate that.

That's without considering repeated words. If day 1 was just "Learned" (grammatically a stump, but give the kid a break!), Day 2 could easily be "I learned I". (Day 3 maybe "I learned another"/"I learned word", then "I learned another word" on day 4...) 172.71.242.219 00:39, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

There's nothing that indicates that it's one word a day, or even one word at a time. They could, for example have learned all the other words on the previous day, and only learned the word 'update' today. 172.70.90.245 08:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if it’s a deliberate reference, but it reminds me of the factoid that, while Green Eggs and Ham only contains 50 unique words, a child who knows those 50 would realistically have to know several hundred (I can’t re-find the specific number). 172.70.122.53 23:38, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

This kid somehow avoided the almost universal step of learning "dada" and "mama" (or similar words in other languages) as their first words. https://www.livescience.com/32191-why-are-mama-and-dada-a-babys-first-words.html Barmar (talk) 23:45, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

A related game: What sentences could have been formed on the preceding eleven days?

Rules

1. Each sentence must contain the same number of words as the number of the day

2. Words can only be added - each previously learned word must occur in subsequent days

3. The sentence must make sense - this is clearly a highly articulate child

4. On Day 12 the words must be "Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve"

Day 1: "Another" (possibly in reference to something that child wants to happen again)

Day 2: "I learned", "Another word", or "Vocabulary Word"

A possible solution, if it is allowed for the child to omit some words previously learned:

1: Word?

2: Another word.

3: Learned another word!

4: I learned another word.

5: I learned another word today.

6: I learned another vocabulary word today.

7: Vocabulary update: I learned another word today.

8: Bringing another vocabulary update: I learned another word today.

9: Bringing my vocabulary update: I learned another word today.

10: Update to my vocabulary: I learned another word today.

11: Update to my total vocabulary: I learned another word today.

12: Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve.

My attempt:

1 (vocabulary) = "Vocabulary!"

2 (update) = "Vocabulary update!"

3 (my) = "Update my vocabulary!"

4 (I) = "I update my vocabulary!"

5 (learned) = "Update: I learned my vocabulary" [or "I update my learned vocabulary"]

6 (to) = "I learned to update my vocabulary"

7 (word) = "I learned to update my word vocabulary"

8 (another) = "Update to my vocabulary: I learned another word"

9 (bringing) = "Update: bringing another word to my vocabulary, I learned"

10 (today)= "Update: I learned today, bringing another word to my vocabulary."

11 (total) = "Update: I learned today, bringing another word to my total vocabulary."

12 (twelve) = "Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve."

Kittyabbygirl (talk) 23:51, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Why does the number of words uttered have to be the same as the number of the day? If that's just a rule that's been invented for this game, then fair enough - be as arbitrary as you like. Otherwise though, that's not implied anywhere.Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 23:57, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

My attempt at the first eleven days:

Word

Another word

Update: Another word

My update: another word

My update: another vocabulary word

My update today: another vocabulary word

Update to my vocabulary: another word today

Another word update to my total vocabulary today

Bringing another word update to my total vocabulary today

Bringing another word update to my total learned vocabulary today

Update: I learned vocabulary today, bringing another word to my total.

(I assumed that the child provides one of these updates every day and used that as the topic of the sentences, and I allowed for the kinds of omissions seen in casual adult speech ("[I am] going to the store; do you need anything?"). 162.158.158.161 00:03, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Attempting to deliberately defer/advance various words, without too much look-ahead... 1:"Today..." 2:"Another today!" 3:"Today, another update." 4:"Bringing another update, today." 5:"Bringing today, another total update." 6:"Another total today, bringing vocabulary update." 7:"Today my vocabulary update, bringing another total." 8:"Total update today. Bringing another vocabulary, my word!" 9:"Twelve today! My vocabulary update bringing another word total." 10:"Today update my 'Twelve' total, bringing another word to vocabulary." 11:"Bringing ‘learned’ today, another word to my total 'twelve update' vocabulary" 12:"Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve."

Of course, my choices strain grammar frequently, but proper "grammar" isn't something the child claims to have yet. Maybe in another couple of days. 172.69.194.36 08:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Related Game
Why is all this stuff about the "related game" on the main page and not here on the Talk page? I don't get it. Is it just that no one has moved it? Yeah, sure, it's better off below the grey box for the talk page transclusion, but it's still wrong. JohnHawkinson (talk) 01:34, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I've moved it now. --172.71.254.77 03:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

My attempt:

1) I

2) I learned

3) I learned: word

4) I learned another word

5) I learned another word: vocabulary

6) I learned another vocabulary word today

7) Update: I learned another vocabulary word today

8) My update: I learned another vocabulary word today

9) My total vocabulary update: today, I learned another word today

10) To update my total vocabulary, I learned another word today

11) To update my total vocabulary, I learned another word today: bringing

12) Vocabulary update: I learned another word today bringing my total to twelve

Baralong (talk) 07:59, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

A generalization to the related game

Given some predetermined list of usable English words (say, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary), what is the longest amount of days one can "last for", with the rules that:

1) one must speak exactly n words in a single, grammatically correct sentence on day n

2) all words spoken on day n-1 must be used for the day n sentence

3) all forms of punctuation are allowed (e.g. the original comic used a colon)

4) no lists in the sentence (too boring)

5) no adjective trains (maximum of 1 adjective per noun)

162.158.175.158 02:35, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Bumpf

I think you could get a very long way by simply continuing to stack adjectives on a noun, so you might have to bar that too. Also, is it just grammatically correct, or does the the sentence have to make sense, because those are not the same thing, and allowing nonsense would give a lot more leeway.172.71.242.30 08:47, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

very interesting! I have edited my original comment with that new rule. Sentences like colorless green ideas sleep furiously are totally allowed :) 172.71.26.97 12:28, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Bumpf