Junie B. Jones and Mr. Jellyfish

Clark’s article operates under the premise that “children learn to coin agent and instrument nouns only around age five to seven” (2). Children’s production of words like “zibbing-man (11%) or zib-man (5%)” (2) – which Clark ascribes to the principle of transparency – when asked to create an agent out of the nonexistent word “zib” was very interesting to me; this kind of response indicates that the younger children only view humans as capable agents/instrument nouns, suggesting that other living things – such as animals – do not, in their mind, qualify as something that can produce and be defined by their actions. This contradicts a kind of stereotype about children that I’ve somehow accumulated in my mind over the last several years: the assumption that children always anthropomorphize animals, viewing them – like their targeted picture books about "Mr. Jellyfish" do – as human proxies with the same operating capabilities but cuter faces. Evidently, there is some kind of distinction in the child’s psyche, even as young as around five years old; if “children acquiring German,” however, “beg[i]n to coin numerous agent and instrument nouns between age two and three” (2), we are again examining a phenomenon subject to change between languages, rather than a universal human truth.

Clark goes on to assert that “when [children] coin new words, they do so by using permissible devices of the language, though not necessarily the ones conventionally used by adults” (2). This most strongly reminds me of my own childhood language exploration, but in the form of Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones books. Kindergartner Junie B.’s vocabulary is littered with grammatical misinterpretations that would otherwise follow the rules of English perfectly (if English weren’t such as bogus language), such as “runned,” “thinked,” and  “throwed” in place of their “proper” counterparts (“ran,” “thought,” “threw”). Beyond solely the linguistic missteps of a five-year-old, adult “speakers [still]… search their vocabulary for [an] appropriate word. If they cannot find one, they may create a new word… turn[ing] to their repertoire of word-formation devices” (3). I’ve observed this in every discussion-based class in every step of my education, where someone offering a thought isn’t sure what the noun form of some verb is and thus adds “–tion” to the end; at this point, everyone ignores the faux-pas and understands the speaker’s intention, and Clark would point to this as a prime example of the principle of conventionality. I’m glad this pattern as a name, really, since I’ve noticed it so often, and knowing that it’s both as simple and complex as having a mentally stored “word or device” that is “conventionally used to express the requisite meaning and give it priority over other forms” (6) is a fascinating facet of speech acquisition, one that we usually take for granted.