3V1156.01 Spelling a word: “B-E-R” for bear, from “BearHug”

Peggy sat on the floor by her typewriter. She looked up at me and said, ‘I spelled ‘Bear’.’ when I asked her how, Peggy pressed in sequence the letters, ‘B’, ‘E’, & ‘R’. I asked how she knew to spell Bear that way, but she did not answer. Note, however, that her favorite toy animal ‘BearHug’ lay on the floor next to her and has his name printed on his shirt.

Peggy’s assumption that words on things are their names is borne out in this case and it permitted her a breakthrough, the first expression of a name as a sequence of letters instead of a single token symbol.

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