LANGUAGE INTO LITERATURE

That gasping cry! What relief to the waiting! The baby is born, and it lives!

That cry betokens the birth of language too. If crying is not language, it is at least its raw material. The baby cries not with its vocal organs only, but with its whole body. Its body jerks, twists and bends, its legs and arms kick and slash, in crying. Here is the first expression of feeling, of pain or joy, who knows! It soon becomes, to be sure, an expression of desire, for food or for ease from pain.

In a few days new sounds are heard from the baby. These are apparently grunts of satisfaction, as they are usually heard after feeding or a warm bath.

The baby is now master of three kinds of sound patterns, the cry of hunger, the cry of pain and the gurgle of contentment.

The next stage is when it begins to 'reply' to the talk of father or mother. This reply is a kind of cooing or crooning. The baby is now become a sort of social being.

How delighted the mother is when she hears her young one make a sound like 'ma aa'. She is sure that the child has learnt to call her 'Mummy' or 'Amma' or 'Ma'. How lucky it is that in almost all languages the word for mother has this 'ma' sound as a basic element! When the 'b' 'k' 'I' sounds appear mothers can take them for 'cow', 'crow', 'milk.'

Within the first year the child produces practically all the sounds in all the languages of the world. It can, if required, now become Chinese or Peruvian or Congolese, in addition to being Dravidian or Aryan. Every baby is born a citizen of the world, whatever it might grow into.

The baby is born an assiduous student too. Each new sound that it learns of itself to make, it practises. This practising, by repetition, is most noticed after food. Not rest after food, but work, seems to be its motto. And it enjoys its work too. Happiness is as intimately connected with the activity of the vocal cords as un-happiness. With the baby the making of sounds is also a kind of play, a play it can play alone.

This play, this talking to oneself in delight, continues till it is about a year old. By then it has begun imitating words that it hears from elders.

Mother has been teaching baby to pronounce 'papa. About the eighth month it succeeds in imitating the sound but without knowing its meaning. Not much later, however, it starts pronouncing the word when it sees father. Meaningfully calling mother 'mammamma' follows. Curiously enough this is sometimes followed by calling both father and mother 'mamma.' Occasionally a new coinage 'mammappa' also is heard. Why separate or distinguish or discriminate where there is no difference in love!

Imitation of sounds heard, now extends to the sounds of cats, dogs, calves. This is about thirteen months after birth. One or two months later begins pointing at things as well as imitating sounds. Gesture language is gaining in importance. Internationalism again?

Even after twenty-four months the imitation and practising of new sounds continues. The repetition of new words delights it and makes it laugh. The little one names something and laughs as if it were a big joke. But alongwith this is invented a new joke, making meaningless sounds that look like words and then laughing. The child is the original inventor of nonsense literature. Lears and Carolls were only imitating them when they thought they were being pioneers.

Understanding one word leads to understanding two words and the consequent using of two words, two-word sentences. A sentence like 'papa go' (papa gone) is heard two or three months before the second birthday.

The little child, one finds, is afraid of using the word 'my'- It fears that if it calls its shirt my shirt it would become everybody's shirt. The safe thing to use is baby's shirt or later Nalin's (its name) shirt. And it plays for safety. The sense of property is strengthening. 'I' and 'mine' are everybody's and only 'baby's' 'Nalin's' is its. 'Mamma', 'papa' also become unsatisfactory. Nothing less than 'Nalin's papa' will do.

From this is seen following a curious development. Everything must be somebody's. So 'brother's rain', 'father's moon' follow. But whose baby, father's or mother's? This presents a real difficulty. Some children are very clever, cleverer than diplomats. They claim they are 'Pama's'!

Adjectives, adverbs, question forms, more verb forms are increasingly used with the passing of months.

And then suddenly child bursts into literature. About the age three and a half when shown the bee winging from flower to flower Nalin coolly remarks, 'see it flies holding an umbrella'. This little poet reports seeing a piggie to father: pig come showing buttocks, there is a tail tied up there (like that on mother's head eh!). Looking up at the sky to see echo balloon he sees stars, and remarks, 'These stars, after a bath, and putting on fresh clothes, they are waiting to see the rocket!'

Developing fast, sure, into an Alexander Pope or a Collay Gibber!