011_It takes two to tango
The challenge this time is to map the Canjeez 音 sound, 意 mind, and 憶 memory onto the three shapes that I used last time to take a closer look at 想 think about: a square, a triangle, and a circle.
I described in #007 and #008 the process by which 心 heart transforms 音 sound into 意 mind, and then 意 mind into 憶 memory. You might like to refresh your own memory before reading the following.
We start with the baby (me, actually) looking at the moon:
The parent (my mother) notices that the baby is looking at something:
The mother identifies what the baby is looking at:
The mother, who is speaking English, names the object of the baby’s attention.
音 sound appears in the triangle of shared attention:
The baby hears something, but it means nothing. It’s just noise. There is nothing in the baby’s memory that can return a potentially meaningful match for this sensory input:
The mother persists. Eventually, the sound is recorded in the baby’s memory:
But at this stage the baby hasn’t worked out the significance of the sound. Gradually, the baby comes to understand that this particular sound is heard when a particular object is the shared object of attention. The baby starts to put two and two together. This generates the square, which indicates that the baby is attending to two sensory inputs at the same time:
Finally, the baby works out that the sound in memory identifies this particular object.
心 heart combines with 音 sound to make 意 mind. The baby makes up its mind, as it were, about this sound. This happens in the square, the interface between the baby’s “in here” and “out there”. Two sensory inputs bind to form a word. For the baby, everything begins to “make sense”.
The baby is strongly motivated to remember this new word. So the baby’s 心 heart combines with 意 mind to make 憶 memory. Memory is in the circle. Every new memorised word will contribute to the baby’s budding identity. The baby’s mother tongue will be the core of that identity. The baby’s immediate social circle will be populated by other people who speak this language (or two languages in the case of a bicultural child, for example).
When the mother and the baby next look at the same object and the mother names it, a relevant combination of sound and object is already present in the baby’s memory. The stage is set for the baby’s head to bobble around and seek out the object when the mother says, “Moon”.
The final step is for the baby to produce the sound at an appropriate moment, and thereby demonstrate to the happy mother that the name of the object has been learned. This satisfying evidence of learning will motivate the mother to model more language for the baby.
The baby’s articulation of “moon” will not be perfect at first, but with practice the baby will be able to say the word as well as the mother:
The dance of language acquisition begins.
Back when I was a baby, clinging to my mother by the light of the moon, she’d take the lead and I’d follow. Safe in her arms, I turned as she turned. I followed the movement of her arm as she pointed at the moon. I followed her gaze as she looked up at the night sky. For months, she held me close and I followed the sound of her voice, its music, its melody, its rhythm. Finally I found my feet and we began to dance together, in harmony, in time to the music. I even started to take the lead. As I took my first halting steps, my mother encouraged me. Before long I found my own voice, my own song, and my own way around the dance floor of English.
Eventually, I went solo, and danced halfway around the world to Japan. There, I learned that the word for “word” was tango, and I came to see that long, long ago, it took two to tango.