D’s 15 month vocabulary update

Just after my previous vocabulary post in mid April (the state of the vocabulary), D went radio silent, except for variations on “baa,” for a whole month while he focused on walking.

We are now in the midst of a language explosion where D demonstrates new words and signs almost every day!  I don’t know who is more excited, him or us.

Let me preface this by explaining what qualifies as a word for us.  These are words observed a by attentive parents (and a linguist, to boot), with a lot of context.  Everything here has been observed at least twice.  Verbal words have some of the right sounds, but usually not all of them.   These words come and go.  Sounds like the /s/ at the end of “bus” have come and gone and come back again over the course of 5-6 months.  The signs, like the sounds aren’t quite right, and they are limited by his dexterity.  Despite all these qualifications and caveats, I am confident about this list:

In each category, the most commonly used words are at the top.

“More” and “milk” just become spoken words in the last week, after many months of signing. 

D recently started signing “Daddy”.  He taps his temple with an index finger, rather than making an open hand tapping the forehead with the thumb. If he wasn’t also saying the word, one might think he was indicating his head. 

We sign and count as we ride the elevator  which is where he gets “two”.  He looks at his hand while saying “two” and tries to fold in the extra three fingers, but can’t seem to do it. 

I’ve been signing and saying water for months, but it just emerged recently with the pronunciation “wa wa”, which I highly expect is something he heard from another kid or adult at his new daycare.  He just signed it today for the first, time although he couldn’t get his fingers in to the “W” shape.

The meanings don’t always line up with adult meanings.  For example, he does say “yellow” and “blue” and he often seems to say them in reference to color, he isn’t consistent or accurate in which colors he labels with them. 

The story of “big” is one of my favorites.  We were hiking in late July and he stood on the trail and spread his arms wide and said “bii” then turned 180 degrees and did it again and again, like he couldn’t get over the size of the forest and the trees.  He probably said it 10 times then, and I haven’t heard it since. 

He has combined a few signs a few time, like “more food”, “siren truck”, “where daddy” and “done pooping”.

It’s been incredible to watch his comprehension grow too.  At times his efforts to learn new words and signs seems very intentional.  At this point, he can apparently hear a word only once and produce it months in the future.