Psycho linguistics

You and Vishal decide to head into the library to study psychology, because there’s always another book to read for that damned class. The two of you find a table in the conversation-allowed section with a stack of shoulder-high books and set about dividing up the books to read.

“Nobody gives a rat’s ass about language acquisition. Why’s the prof making us read this focking shit?” Vishal asks, picking out a book by Noam Chomsky. He skims it and frowns. “Seriously? This is such bogus. No way does he believe that babies are born understanding language.”

“You’ve hardly gotten started,” you reply, paging through your own book. “I bet it’ll make sense by the time you’re through with it.”

“Yeah, fat chance of that,” he says, putting the book aside. “Let me take a look at some of these other papers that he assigned. At least those look like they were written in the last fifty years. Oh, like here, this one’s about infant-directed speech. This is cool.”

“What, the cutesy baby talk that couples use with each other?” you say, making a face. “Doesn’t that weird you out?”

“Don’t rag on it if you don’t know,” Vishal replies. “Grieser and Kuhl here are saying that it’s a universal thing across languages. So y’know, if I go googoo gaga bababababababaaaa—”

He freezes as he sees Sarah walking through the library, the final syllable of his babbling drawn out well beyond any reasonable length. In all fairness, Sarah is looking hot today. She’s dressed in thigh-high stockings and a short skirt with a cute white blouse on top, a classic fuck-me schoolgirl look that’s drawing stares from you and Vishal alike. She pauses by your table to give Vishal a hard look, her mouth twitching.

“—aaaaaaaaaaaaaa—” he continues saying, staring up into her tits.

“Is this kid okay?” she asks you, her brown eyes flashing.

“He’s just a bit crazy,” you say, doing your best to play it cool. “Putting the ‘psycho’ in psychology, you know?”

“Heyyy baby, I mean, boo, I mean, babe, bae, you wanna…”

Vishal keeps floundering with his baby words. Sarah, unable to hold it in any longer, bursts out laughing.

“You’re trying to read the Chomsky?” she asks him, glancing at the book on his table. “Pity he never met you, because you single-handedly disprove his theory. Clearly you’ve never acquired any linguistic capabilities whatsoever.”

“Boom, that’s another point for camp Carnap,” you say.

“Boom,” Sarah laughs, shaking her head. Then, she thinks for a second. “Carnap. That’s on the optional reading for this week,” she says, giving you an impressed look. “That’s supposed to be a hard one, no?”

“Never walk away from the fountain of knowledge thirsty. That’s my motto,” you say, letting the implication of her statement stand. “I’m intimately familiar with hard, if you get my drift.”

Obviously you haven’t done the optional reading—you’re still trying to catch up on the regular stuff here with Vishal—but there’s no harm with exploiting the little tidbits of information that you’ve gotten from reading the syllabus.

“I look forward to seeing that in class,” Sarah says, giving you a quick smirk. “Me and hard, we’re acquaintances too.”

“—you wanna… wanna… do uh… uh, a, ahhh, a—”

“I’m going to head out before this guy manages to accidentally complete a sentence,” Sarah says, giving the fawning Vishal a judgemental look (and can you blame her, really?).

With that, she’s gone, off to find her own study posse of suck-ups or something like that. Almost instantly, Vishal seems to recover his regular speech function.

“Turns out hot girls make me regress to infantile speech too,” he says, staring at Sarah’s retreating figure. She’s got a nice ass, so you stare too.

“Dude, you seriously just broke down there,” you say. “How’d you ever score a girlfriend?”

“She likes it when I go soft in the head,” he says, a don’t-believe-me-but-it’s-true smile crossing his face. “She’s one of those weirdos that likes baby talk, as you put it.”

“Okay, fine. But now you’re hitting on Sarah when you’ve got a girlfriend,” you say, doing your best to not sound too accusatory.

“She’s far away, man,” Vishal laughs. “Besides, I’m just playing. You saw how I was. Not like I’m getting anywhere with the girls on this side of the pond.”

“Yeah,” you say, raising an eyebrow. “You can say that again. Might as well hit the books then, huh?”

“Back to the books it is,” he agrees with a sigh.

Vishal +5
Sarah +15