{"id":68,"date":"2009-03-18T16:26:07","date_gmt":"2009-03-18T22:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2009-03-18T16:27:39","modified_gmt":"2009-03-18T22:27:39","slug":"language-quirks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"Language Quirks"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was originally a post over at my LiveJournal, but generated so many comments that I thought it might be of even more interest here.\u00a0 I copied & pasted, which seems to have preserved the LJ font size (and I haven’t a clue what to do about it…or why, when I posted this and then looked at it, only one paragraph is “that” size…)\u00a0 Over there<\/a> (for anyone who wants to go look and read the comments) the title is Language and Autism.\u00a0\u00a0 I have invited the people commenting there to consider coming here and continuing the discussion.<\/p>\n

Our son did not learn to talk early, and for years after he said his first word (many years) his syntax was odd enough to make his speech barely intelligible to most people.\u00a0\u00a0 Though it has improved a lot, he still gets “tangled’ sometimes, and often “mazes”\u00a0(repeating parts of a sentence several times.) \u00a0 It’s clear to me that he’s constructing the sentences in chunks, and has to repeat every chunk to get the whole thing out at the end (like those songs where you have to repeat a key part of previous verses–Old MacDonald’s Farm, for instance.)<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m helping him (I hope it’s help) learn to write coherent essays.\u00a0\u00a0 Last night he brought me one that was light years better than he’s done before, but had a very interesting syntactical glitch in it.\u00a0\u00a0 He was talking about the restrictions he deals with on outings led by a social worker, that include other disabled adults–he can’t go to the restaurants he likes best, or buy the food he wants “because expensive things are unwanted to be bought on outings.”\u00a0\u00a0 And later, about activities he prefers,\u00a0 “There are fewer restrictions because not as many people other people have to focus on.”<\/p>\n

What’s fascinating is the clear thought behind the syntax:\u00a0 he clearly understands the restrictions of the group outing, and some of the social reasons for those restrictions–and makes it clear he prefers to be taken to a recreational activity (by one of us) and left to do it on his own, including walking a few blocks to an eating place he likes, to choose the food he wants in the amount he wants.\u00a0\u00a0 Many of the sentences in the essay were correct, fluent, concrete, as they were.\u00a0\u00a0 The logical sequences, of liking this because<\/em> A, B, C, and not liking that because<\/em> D,E, F all made sense.<\/p>\n

So where did “are unwanted to be bought” come from?\u00a0\u00a0 Knowing him, I see a conflict between the growing ability to be direct and straightforward in syntax and social stress…saying who made\/enforced the restrictions might cause a problem.\u00a0 Especially telling mama tiger, who’s been known to intervene forcefully.\u00a0 (Not at this point.\u00a0 He doesn’t have to go on these outings if he doesn’t want to, and he gets to decide if the pleasure he gets is worth dealing with the restrictions.\u00a0 That’s how you learn to make choices that work for you.\u00a0 Having to eat a kid’s meal once a week or less won’t starve him.)\u00a0 Conflict between what he knows and what he thinks the other person wants to hear–and the struggle to resolve this into “polite” language explains, I think, the odd construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was originally a post over at my LiveJournal, but generated so many comments that I thought it might be of even more interest here.\u00a0 I copied & pasted, which seems to have preserved the LJ font size (and I haven’t a clue what to do about it…or why, when I posted this and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,26],"tags":[3,13,4],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-parenting","tag-autism","tag-communication","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}