LANGUAGE IN INDIA

CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN LITERATURE

K. Ramasamy , Ph.D.

1. INTUITIVE THOUGHTS ON CHILD LANGUAGE IN INDIAN LITERATURE

A systematic attempt to study childhood communication is rather recent in Indian linguistics, but there have been certain intuitive thoughts expressed about it since the early days through Indian literary works and traditional grammars. Traditional grammars in Indian languages like Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, make references to the special characteristics of language use in childhood. The language of children is considered more melodious, truthful, and divine. It is also said that the language used by children is plain, simple, literal, and straightforward, lacking in "metaphorical" usage. Sometimes it is also pointed out that the language used by children could be out of focus or context. Thus, generally speaking, the observations made regarding child language revolve around its function in communication, not on the linguistic structures that are progressively developed and acquired by children.

2. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN STUDIES OF CHILD LANGUAGE IN RELATION TO INDIAN LITERATURE

1. Modern studies on the acquisition of language by children focus on the co-ordination between the physical, cognitive, and linguistic maturational milestones. The linguistic studies assume the co-ordination between physical and cognitive maturational milestones, and look at the emerging linguistic structures in relation to cognition. Early thoughts on child language acquisition that we glean through Indian literature somewhat relate to this process, but their focus is more on the aesthetic side of the performance of children.
2. Generally speaking, it seems to me that the study of childhood language acquisition is not treated as an independent study in early linguistic grammars. But, at the same time, grammarians have not failed to notice that the adults assign certain functions to the language of children.
3. A third characteristic of the study of child language use in the Indian tradition is that it is linked to the theological positions relating to a variety of gods and goddesses and heroes and heroines whose lives are narrated in a poetic work. This system was fine tuned in medieval Tamil literature. The very same Hindu god or goddess may be worshipped as a child, young person, or an old person. Each of these milestones, according to the Hindu belief, may be assigned special powers and characteristics. Krishna is worshipped as Bala Krishna, and Murugan is worshipped as Bala Murugan. The theological underpinnings to the belief system have helped Indian grammarians focus on the childhood language. Once again, note that the approach is rather functional, not structural.

3. THEOLOGICAL POSITIONS AND CHILD LANGUAGE

The tradition of focusing upon the childhood of gods and goddesses, spiritual leaders of great merit, and heroes and heroines is adopted in several religions practiced in India, apart from Hinduism. For example, stories abound in the Hadith literature about the childhood incidents that took place in the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Catholics celebrate the glory of the Infant Jesus. Buddhist tales speak about the special events that took place in the life of Gautama.

4. LITERARY TRADITIONS AND CHILD LANGUAGE

In the Tamil literary tradition, there is a distinctive literary genre called piLLaittamiL^h ilakkiyam, (literally, the literature of child or childhood Tamil), which deals with the narration of the childhood of a god/goddess, or hero/heroine. The first available literary work of this genre belongs to the 12th century A.D., called kulo:ttungac co:L^han piLLaittamiL^h. However, references to this genre are found even in the earliest Tamil grammar, Tolkappiyam (300 B.C.?) This grammar recognizes "childhood" as a distinctive theme within Tamil literature (sutra 1030). Stages of childhood have been referred to in several works that were composed after Tolkappiyam. For example, Tirukkural expresses its great admiration for the babbling of the infants as giving great pleasure to the ear, "more melodious and sweeter than pipe and lute." Tamil language use treats "child" and "god" as synonymous in its various expressions.

5. SOME PECULIARITIES OF LITERATURE ON CHILDHOOD IN TAMIL

There are hundreds of piLLaittamiL^h works in Tamil till date, the subjects of narration ranging from goddess Parvati and god Murugan to the recent popular political personalities like Kamaraj and M. G. Ramachandran. It is important to note that a poet may write a piLLaittamiL^h work on all sorts of gods and goddesses, but he is forbidden to write a piLLaittamiL^h work on Siva, according to the Tamil tradition. Saivite scholars claim that Siva has no beginning and end and hence he should not be portrayed as a child in the literature. The evangelical and Protestant Christians will not worship Jesus as an infant, because Jesus' ministry revolves around his crucifixion and resurrection, and not on his childhood.

Remember, the focus is not on the actual childhood of the subjects. More often than not, the childhood is reconstructed in an imaginary manner befitting the great roles played by the gods, goddesses, heroes and heroines later in their adulthood.

6. THE STRUCTURE OF THE GENRE RELATING TO LITERATURE ON CHILDHOOD

This genre has a distinctive structure that is to be followed strictly by the poet. The structure is based on certain perceived stages of childhood and the characteristics attached to each stage. For example, a piLLaittamiL^h literary work, by definition, divides the childhood into ten phases (pattup paruvankaL).

The first phase begins when the child is three months old. Each phase runs for two months. In other words, the piLLaittamiL^h genre tries to cover the first two years in the life of the child. For each of these phases certain physical and cognitive behaviors are listed.

The reason for the omission of the first two months is not explained in grammatical or prosody works that define and describe this genre. However, we may surmise that since the focus of this genre is the active involvement of the child with the environment, the grammarians may have decided to begin the literary work at a time when the child is physically able to make his own deliberate movements in some sense, and begins to indulge in deliberate acts and interaction.

7. THE PHASES OF CHILDHOOD

A description of the childhood phases is given below.

8. THE FUNCTIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHASES

The literary work usually does not report on any significant characteristic or function for the first phase. This period is considered to be a period meant for the parents and others to pray to gods for the health and well being of the child.

The second phase (fifth and sixth months) is called ta:lapparuvam, meaning the period of lullabys. In this phase the child begins to notice the lullaby sung by his mother or caregiver. It is also said that the child gets some training to develop his tongue movements for linguistic communication. This stage or phase is named kutalai, a pre-babbling phase.

The third phase (seventh and eighth months) is known as cenki:raipparuvam, referring somewhat to the nimble features of the child's body and mind. This phase is physically associated with the child lying on his stomach and moving the head and one leg up. Linguistically it is said to involve maL^halai, 'babbling.' It is at this phase that the child is given some practice for a sound sequence that involves velar nasal and voiced stop followed a resonance.

The second and third phases can, in fact, be merged into a single stage for our convenience and stated to represent the 'preliminary' or 'prelinguistic stage.' To some extent, this stage is comparable to Oller's stages of infant speech production (Oller 1980).

9. ABSENCE OF INFORMATION ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Unfortunately, no further information about language development is available in the other higher phases, eventhough these higher phases are shown to have distinctive physical developments. At the fourth phase (ninth and tenth months), the child gets some practice to sit and clap with his palms. In phase 5, the child is induced to give a kiss. In phase 6, the child is enabled to walk and respond to the mother's call by walking towards his mother. In phase 7, the child is enabled to interact with the nature. The mother sings a song pointing towards the moon and inviting the moon to come down to earth to play with the child. The eight, ninth, and tenth phases begin to distinguish between the male and female children. The female children are shown to engage themselves with their peer group in activities that are marked and specific to girl children in the Tamil society. These games or activities include throwing and catching the pebbles, bathing, and swinging. The activities or the games for the male children in these phases show that the male children destroy the sand houses built by the female children (to establish their male superiority?), beating small drums and making a lot of noise, and pulling small chariot-like objects. The differential personality traits expected and attributed to different genders in the Tamil society are clearly embodied in this traditional genre in an approving manner.

10. CONCLUSION

The focus of this genre detailing the various phases in child growth is certainly not on language use or language development in early childhood. The genre focuses only on the first two years in the life of the infants. The creative writers who composed works in this genre as well as the society at large appear to be more interested in the adoration of the childhood of the hero than in the correct depiction of childhood behaviors including language use. Some reality is built into the description of childhood behavior by making references to some real childhood activities approved and expected in the society, and by recording the responses from the caregivers, etc. Since the traditional grammarians focused implicitly more on adult language as the legitimate domain for their description, (and since the children after all speak a form of speech that is not standard in some sense despite its melodiousness, sweetness, transparency, truthfulness, etc.), there were no readily available rules and descriptions of usage for the creative writers to use in their creative works. Poetry in Tamil and in other cultivated literary languages of India often used only the standard (written) variety. The children's speech would fall under the colloquial and non-standard. This perhaps might have stopped further exploration of the characteristics of child language acquisition and use in this genre.

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REFERENCES

Oller, D.K. 1980. The Emergence of the Sounds of Speech in Infancy. In Yeni-Komshian, Kavanaugh, and Ferguson. First Langauge Acquisition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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