[Xmca-l] Re: Help With Russian

[larry smolucha]

Message from Francine:

Hi David,

The English translation eliminated one word from the Russian 'Уже' that means 'already'
the cooperative relationship is already established although elementary and simple.
The small room and a simple cooperative relationship that is already established is what Charles Bazerman described in the example where his child was able to see the spaghetti
colander in the cabinet that his parents were searching for (the one-year-old child in a walker has a different line of sight into the cabinet). 

I read somewhere that comprehension of language (related to concrete imagery) precedes the
spoken language equivalents in early childhood. Animals can also retrieve objects and perform actions prompted by verbal 'commands' even though they do not speak. Example: saying to a dog "Time for a walk, get your leash." 

This is not to diminish Charles charming anecdote.


Even though the child 
> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 08:08:37 +0900
> From: dkellogg60@gmail.com
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Help With Russian
> 
> Thanks, all. So the child is the peer of the adult so long as they are
> indoors and so long as they have an elementary collaborative relation.
> 
> Actually, this confirms Vygotsky's criticism of Blonsky's scheme. Blonsky
> is obsessed with teething, and everything has to be somehow related to
> teeth and to feeding. So there is a kind of "energy economy", whereby
> higher forms of sociality are only enabled by the child's energy surpluses.
> I guess that's why they have to be indoors and inactive in order to be
> peers.
> 
> What Vygotsky says is that this scheme of things works okay for the first
> year but not for the second.
> 
> David Kellogg
> 
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 1:01 AM, Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi David,
> >
> > It seems to me that the translation is reasonable. My interpretation is
> > that a two-year old child is capable of elementary and simple cooperation
> > with and adult. If we exclude locomotion capabilities, the child might be
> > considered somewhat on par with the adult regarding simple cooperation.
> >
> > I am not sure how the child development experts will view this statement.
> > I am not an expert in that area. Also, I am not sure what are the minimal
> > criteria for cooperation and how cooperation is construed by the authors.
> > It is also possible that the authors use criteria that are very different
> > than the criteria in the literature we use. It is a matter of different
> > conceptualizations, paradigms, and traditions.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Lubomir
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> > xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David
> > Kellogg
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 3:19 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Help With Russian
> >
> > We're working through Vygotsky's very long chapter on infancy in the
> > "Child Development" book he was working towards the end of his life. He has
> > just introduced Blonsky's partitioning of infancy into three stages, on the
> > basis of the presence or absence of teeth. Then, the Russian Collected
> > Works (foot of p. 303) has this:
> >
> > "На 2-м году жизни ребенок равномощен взрослому в малоподвижной комнатной
> > обстановке и между ними устанавливаются уже отношения сотрудничества,
> > правда элементарного, простого сотрудничества."
> >
> > The English Collected works renders this as:
> >
> > "In the second year of life, the child is equal to the adult in a room in
> > a situation where little movement is required and between them a relation
> > of cooperation, although elementary and simple, is established."
> >
> > But this doesn't make any sense at all, at least not in English. Is it
> > possible that it's a misprint?
> >
> > David Kellogg
> >
> >