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Why Must We Search for a New Explanation for the Acquisition of a Mother Tongue?

1.1. A child's transformation of the source language: a necessary passage

Behind the question "why must we search for a new explanation for the acquisition of a mother tongue?" one may be inclined to question a point of view, widespread but not always made explicit, according to which a child acquires their mother tongue through imitation, repetition and analogy. It is clear that, in order to acquire a certain amount of knowledge in the form of gestures or ways of moving, imitation is the tool used by both small humans and small animals. Yet languages are the tools that produce meaning and they have a unique way of working, partly due to the type of specifically linguistic combining factor: the meaning of a predication arises from the combination of arbitrary units devoid of intrinsic meaning; and on the other hand due to the range of possible combinations which are, on the scale of human perception, infinite. On the level of what is heard, a young child perceives the language of their environment to be characterized by prosodic patterns that distinguish it from others, while the melodic developments of the language they hear are never the same: intonation, rhythm, length, sounds. Therefore, a system of differences is the first that the child perceives, before being able to note some consistent patterns. They must then evaluate to what extent these differences produce meaning. The child is then unconsciously adjoined to a movement of exchanges linked by the language of their linguistic community which gives the same meaning to the same combinations and therefore shares the same subject. Having said this, though language appears before the child, it does not approach them, rather it is the child who must approach it, embrace it. They must speak it in order to make it. And what is pronounced, a few snippets of the spoken word at first, quickly makes sense to their entourage. Their speech makes sense; their speech, which is totally different from the speech they have absorbed, attracts attention, it is taken up by those who surround them, while being modified a little. It is from this first linguistic experience, simultaneously foundational and characteristic of the human species (to establish and maintain contact with those who surround them through language) that a diffuse consciousness of linguistic meaning emerges. It is a case of resembling others, but distinguishing themselves so as to exist as a legitimate being of speech, of utilizing some of their words, but not all of them. In order to maintain speech, the child needs to say something new, whether this be in exchange with their mother (see Henriette, below), with a fictional character (see Chloé) or with themselves (see Laura)1. In the example below, Henriette appropriates the predication of her mother when she goes from saying c'est chaud/it is hot to c'est brûlant/it is burning:

Henriette (2; 0)2 c'est chaud it is hot

[it is bath time, the child is in the bath, the hot water is running]

Her mother ça te brûle ? is it burning you? Henriette c'est brûlant it is burning

Henriette reuses the construction that she initially employs c'est ADJ/it is ADJ, and partially modifies it, while keeping, one may believe, the same meaning. Henriette needs to repeat the word, yet she also needs to rely on the predication of the other person to say it differently. She reuses the verb used by her mother, transforms it into a verbal adjective and reconstructs a new predication c'est brûlant/it is burning.

The two children below each produce, on two occasions, a first utterance and then, without anyone intervening, a second auto-reformulated utterance of equivalent but formally different meaning (to the right of the chevron which notes: is reformulated by this predication). Why does the child feel the need to reformulate an utterance?

Chloé (2; 3)

va dormir go to sleep > fais dodo go to beddy-byes il y a pas de piles there are no batteries > les piles i (ls) sont pas là the batteries are not there

[Chloé is at nursery, playing with and speaking to Lego figures]

Laura (2; 5)

Jean va rigoler Jean will laugh > Jean fait des sourires un petit peu Jean smiles a little bit il me torde la joue he squeezes my cheeks > il me pince la joue un petit peu he pinches my cheeks a little bit

[Laura tells her aunt, who records her without saying a word, what her little brother does to her]

Does this constitute an exhilarating way of maintaining speech? Does the fact of modifying the form of an utterance by re-offering more or less the same information correspond to the way in which the child creates meaning and thus appropriates it for themselves?

In the following utterance, Laura, the same evening and in the same context, generates another type of transformation, in which she reuses the construction il y a du N/there is N and il était en/dans N/he was on/in N to say something very different each time:

Is Laura trying to test all of the words that may fit into each of the two constructions?

These very young children, who are able to produce complete predications, that is to say sequences of words guided by the grammar of their language and eventually creating meaning, show us in what way they go from one utterance to the next. It is precisely this mode of passage, which relies on elements that are retaken and which introduces something new, that the present work will detail, but with reference to older children.

In a completely different context of production, we witness the same need to modify something in the speech of other people, even if they mean more or less the same thing (see in particular the sequences of utterances written in bold). Thus, the following children, educated in nursery school, each define what they believe to be a jungle, then the same for an isba [MAR 94]. One will notice that the definitions provided look very similar on the whole, but one will also note that no predication making up these definitions (apart from qui poussent/that grow) is identical:

Landry (5) la jungle c'est la jungle c'est c'est un village où c'est un bois où il y a plein d'herbes qui poussent où il y a plein d'herbes qui pou/ qui poussent [.] aussi là-bas il y a des grandes fleurs qui p/là-bas aussi il y a des éléphants des éléphants the jungle is the jungle it is it is a village where it is a wood where there is lots of grass that grows where there is lots of grass that gro/ that grows [.] also there there are big flowers which/also there there are elephants elephants Priscilla (5) c'est là où il y a les grandes herbes qui poussent et il y a des fleurs qui poussent et c'est là où ils vivent les lions et et puis les hippopotames et les éléphants it is there where there is big grass that grows and there are flowers that grow and it is there where lions live and and also hippos and elephants Anne-Sophie (6) une isba c'est une maison qui est qui est fabriquée en rondelles de bois et puis même quand eh ben quand on va dedans eh ben si on voit des fenêtres et puis une porte c'est des c'est comme une tente mais c'est pas une tente et puis après l'isba aussi eh ben on peut habiter dedans et même il y a une cheminée puis la cheminée aussi elle est fabriquée en rondelles de bois puis même eh ben on raconte ça aussi dans des chansons puis même dans des histoires an isba is a house which is made of slices of wood and which is then even when umm when you go inside umm if you see the windows and then a door it is it is like a tent but it isn't a tent and then in the isba you can umm also live inside and there is even a chimney and the chimney is also made of slices of wood then one even tells that in songs then also in stories Tiphaine (6) une isba c'est une maison en bois avec des rondins de bois avec une porte des fenêtres an isba is a wooden house with wooden logs with a door (with) windows

Finally, in a context of production which is even more constrained, since the children retell the same story as that which had just been read to them, one observes hardly any repeated predication, even less so that the children are older [MAR 00].

Source utterance 1 (SU1)3: elle ne lui donnait à manger que des restes/she only fed him with leftovers

Constance (5; 6) elle lui donnait des restes she gave him the...