Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2(pesnta.1.2) 9/5/84; site scc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!pesnta!scc!steiny From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: re: false cognates (actually universal tendencies for mother/father words) Message-ID: <500@scc.UUCP> Date: Sun, 7-Jul-85 14:04:33 EDT Article-I.D.: scc.500 Posted: Sun Jul 7 14:04:33 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 8-Jul-85 00:59:08 EDT References: <789@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> Organization: Computational Linguist Lines: 60 > > on the > mother/father generalization. I think R. Jakobsen gets the credit > for suggesting it, before there even were any psycholinguists. > In any case, Georgian provides a wonderful exception. They have > `mama' meaning father and `deda' meaning mother! > > > -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago > ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar I don't excacly remember the title, but it had three parts, something, Aphasia, and Phonlological Universials. Or something like that. Anyway, he did not say that "mama" was necessarily a likely universal for "mother", but rather that speech develops from sucking and that the low back vowels, the bi-labials and the dentals are easier to make than the high front vowels, affricates, fricatives, and velar or glottal sounds. Jackobson reasoned that the first sounds a child makes would be like: ma ta da pa ba na note that the "words" are usually duplicated (hmm, that's interesting). mama tata dada papa baba nana These words attach themselves to the people closest to the baby. Thus, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, brothers, sisters, and so on wind up with those names. According to the theory in one culture a mama could be a tata and a dada a mama. I like the theory, because those words do seem to be universially used, especially if you add mid-vowels. Perhaps Jackobson did, and I forgot. scc!steiny Don Steiny - Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382