fluid language

A 3 year old boy we are friends with and my 2 year old girl both did similar things I found interesting last week.  He pointed at a baseball cap with a GAP logo that he was wearing and said, Know what it says?  Jason. (Jason is his blogname.)
She pointed at her carseat which is inscribed with Eddie Bauer and said  That's L... (her name.)

Neither of them can read yet but obviously both can recognize writing/lettering and know it represents meaningful words.  It made me wonder.  Do they realize that writing is static or do they think that it changes depending on the situation or person it's associated with?  Do they think that the reader assigns meaning to the letters, making up a phrase based on the situation?  Do they think the same way about writing and letters or is it different for each one?

I've always been fascinated by the idea that language is not one hundred percent accurate.  There is some fluidity, some space for meaning and gesture and nuance that we assign individually and where it can only overlap so much with another's personal language experience.  We never know what someone else is thinking exactly, maybe just mostly, or at other times not much at all.  Certainly for my son with language issues this is even more true and makes it all the more astounding how close we are able to be to others even when we have muddy and vague understandings of each other's inner worlds.

I know the magic of putting the pieces together and learning how letters, words and reading work will come for my daughter and our friend Jason.  I wonder what the magic of knowing that letters can have meaning but not knowing the rules is like.  And I wonder about the experience of people who are nonverbal.  And not so infrequently I wonder about the few children who were actually raised by wolves after being lost/abandoned by humans.  How is that world?

How is your world?