3V0965.01 BANG and RING: extending word knowledge (9/13/80)

Peggy can recognize these two words as distinct. She clambered onto
my bed this evening, asking me to read her a Tintin story. We came,
inter alia, across several “bangs” to which Peggy remarked, “That say,
‘BANG’.” As we read on, we came to a picture of a telephone with,
above it, “RRRRING.” I asked Peggy what that word said. She responded,
“That say ‘BANG’.” I asked, “Are you sure?” She studied the picture and
decided, “It say ‘RING’.”

This is an important discrimination not because it shows words at the
core of Peggy’s future knowledge, but because it marks an incident
where she has extended her command of some first word to some
second word. Clearly, the extra alphabetic information signifies the
meanings she puts on the symbols of “RING” by which she has
discriminated it from “BANG.” The next thing to look for is whether
she makes such a discrimination without the pictures. (TRY IN P140.
Take the Tintin to Boston and prepare cards to show her next Sunday.)

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