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These are kids first words after ‘mama’

The findings stayed the same in languages with far more demonstrative words than English.

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By Pol Allingham via SWNS

After "mama" dads have to wait as children’s first words are often “this” and “that” - no matter the language, according to the largest ever study of early vocabulary.

Researchers found that across languages and cultures, kids’ first words are often the ones used to direct caregivers’ attention.

The findings stayed the same in languages with far more demonstrative words than English.

English has just two primary demonstratives, “this” and “that,” while others have up to a dozen.

The American research team claimed the earliness of “this” and “that” across languages and cultures shows children are eager to share attention with others, adding that they generally learn the word between 12 and 18 months.

Moreover, children reportedly focus on "this" and "that" because they find understanding others’ perspectives difficult.

Recording children who speak Ticuna in a community in Peru, researchers observed children learn “ecocentric” demonstratives such as “this near me” or “here near me” about two years earlier than “interactive” demonstratives such as “that near you” or “there near you.”

They found egocentric words made up as much as 15 percent of their used vocabulary - far more than adults.

Dr. Amalia Skilton, a linguistics scholar at Cornell University, said childrens’ use of “this” and “that” is well-documented in widely spoken languages such as English, Spanish and Mandarin, which have relatively simple systems for demonstratives.

Similar patterns were observed among 45 Ticuna speakers in Peru, indicating children’s powerful drive to share attention impacts their language learning - particularly their first words.

Skilton said: “Children learn demonstratives that call others’ attention to objects – such as ‘this/that’ and ‘here/there’ – at extremely young ages, when they know very few other words.

“‘This’ and ‘here’ show up just as early as stereotypical first words like ‘mama.’

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“While adults think of these words as simple, their meanings are fairly challenging for children to understand at young ages and having trouble with them is a typical part of child development.”

Ticuna is spoken by around 69,000 Indigenous people living along the Amazon or Solimões River in Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

It features six demonstratives, and four were studied because they are commonly used.

During her research, Skilton studied a community of around 5,000 people for over a year in Cushillococha, Peru.

The community relies on subsistence farming and Skilton recorded children aged one to four playing with caregivers in their homes, analyzing the early stages of Ticuna spoken in almost 15 hours of video samples.

Dispute the children’s small vocabularies, 12 of the 14 one-year-olds said “this” and “that” or “here” and “there”.

She said this demonstrates the universal drive to share attention, and claimed it confirms caregivers can expect youngsters to speak those words at around 12 to 18 months old - “no matter what language they speak.”

It is already known children struggle to understand what others believe or know, but Skilton said her research also supports the finding that they find it hard to understand how others view objects in space.

Writing in Journal of Child Language, she reckoned it’s a function of cognitive language, rather than any particular language-learning, meaning caregivers shouldn’t necessarily be worried of children under three mess up when using interactive words.

Now, Skilton plans to return to Peru to create the first comprehensive study of joint attention - focusing on children pointing fingers to direct adults’ attention in a non-Western communities.

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