Editing 2839: Language Acquisition

{{comic
| number    = 2839
| date      = October 9, 2023
| title     = Language Acquisition
| image     = language_acquisition_2x.png
| imagesize = 193x239px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = My first words were 'These were my first words; what were yours?'
}}

==Explanation==

{{w|Language acquisition}} is the process by which humans, generally infants, learn a language. There are many theories as to how this process works, but Randall humorously conflates an infant's language acquisition process to an adult's , saying that infants learn languages one new word at a time. This could be equated to how app-based language learning works, at least at certain stages of vocabulary expansion. This is typically not true{{Citation needed}} for infants learning the native language(s) that they will consider as their mother tongue.

The child's sentence says that he has acquired another word, bringing his total to twelve words, all unique. This is conveyed in the twelve unique words spoken, thus indicating (if true) that these are the very (and only) words the infant has acquired up to this point. These would be a very unusual set of words to be the first ones learned for an infant (and even for an adult, deliberately acquiring a new language). Furthermore, the child appears to have learned some fairly advanced grammatical concepts in order to construct this fairly complex sentence, similar to how adults may start with somewhat advanced grammar rules as they start to assemble the knowledge of a new language. Learning grammar typically takes much longer, and only occurs makes sense once sufficient vocabulary has been learnt to recognise the patterns in how the words are used.

Interestingly if this sentence is true, the child has learned the word "twelve" before learning the words for any other numbers, and so could not have given a quantitative update on previous days. However, this would also imply that their counting is not yet as advanced as their language acquisition, which may mean that they are simply wrong about the number of words they have learned.

In fact, it is possible to create a "learning sequence" based on these twelve words to somewhat make a little sense if the words are acquired in a word-after-word basis. An example is shown below:
* Word!
* Another word!
* Learned another word!
* I learned another word.
* I learned another word today.
* Update: I learned another word today.
* Vocabulary update: I learned another word today.
* My vocabulary update: I learned another word today.
* I learned another word today to update my vocabulary.
* I learned another word today to update my total vocabulary.
* Bringing another word I learned to update my total vocabulary today.
* Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve.

Two letter-blocks on the ground next to the child show capitals 'A' and 'B', and a third has an upside-down lowercase 'e'. The block with the 'e' may indeed be upside-down, but it could also be a block with the phonetic symbol {{w|schwa}} on it. As phonetics are generally used by lay-people when they start to learn how different sounds in their target language is pronounced, this would suggest the parents are teaching their child advanced linguistic concepts before they've fully learned to speak their first language, which might explain why the child's language acquisition is so unusual.

The title text makes a self-referential joke about the concept of "first words", where a supposed child discusses one's own first words in a complete sentence. There are seven unique words in the title text, most of which do not appear in the comic image, suggesting the title text and comic image referred to two different children.  It is a common milestone to celebrate a child's "[https://www.parents.com/baby/development/talking/baby-talk-a-month-by-month-timeline1/ first word]", but typically these would be less advanced words, such as "mama" or "dada".

This seems to be another indication that [[Randall]] is conflating adult language acquisition and infant language acquisition, because such moderately-complex sentences are usually a beginner's first attempt in a new target language, by the way of learning set phrases by rote (for concepts they can already voice in another language). Examples might include standard greetings, such as "Hello, my name is [...]", and various questions and answers related to their exposure to the foreign language concerned.

[[2567: Language Development]] has had a similarly obscure take on language acquistion.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A child, drawn as a smaller Hairy. He stands amongst three blocks with letters on them, showing faces with A, B and an upside-down lowercase e. Megan and Cueball stand to the right of him.]
:Child: Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with babies]]