Karim also knows our cats by name. When asked where they are, he points at the orange one if I ask about Tigrou and at the grey one if I enquire about Minoune. One evening, sitting in his high chair from which he often observes the cats circling around hoping for food droplets, he pointed and said 'ssss', 'ssss' repeatedly. When I realized what he was doing, I said 'sssssa', then 'chat' (cat). Karim laughed and tried again: 'ssss', 'sssssssa!' He has been rehearsing the sound ever since, every now and then completely out of a context, as if he is simply practicing the new sound combination. Sometimes I make the sound first to distract his attention from something and he repeats after me with a smile.
Quickly, I realized that the semantic category represented more than his two pets. Tessie the dog that we meet most mornings triggers a long 'ssssssa', as well as the magpies or just the sound of them. Same drill with the airplanes he notices in the sky. Most recently, Karim labeled an elephant he saw on television with the convenient 'sa'. "Nice!", I observed, "my son refers to all non-human beings with the word 'sa'!'' Airplanes must be an accident of perception, quite understandable given that just like birds a) they are in the sky, b) they move around, and c) they make noise. But my own understanding of Karim's world in words was limiting, because later he showed me a nice painting on the wall, 'sssssa!'
Meanwhile, 'ba', which earlier purpose was precisely to name anything interesting, now has a narrower meaning, that of 'ball'. It is interesting to note that both with 'ba' and 'sa', Karim seemed to be using them first to designate their actual referent, that of a ball and of a cat. But then, perhaps upon being praised for using these terms, he generalized their use to all things he finds fascinating or wants to draw our attention to.
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