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