Refining early Basque criteria

[Stefan Georg]

>Unless you are arguing that *mama almost invariably is produced *first*, and
>that the mother is inclined to accept the baby's *first* "word" as referring
>to herself, then it is equally likely that the mother will reinforce *baba
>or *papa as a selfg-designation --- a very rare occurrence.

No, Pat, this is independent of what a given child utters "first" to its
given mother. Language is social convention, and even if in Arkansas
children are so linguistically gifted that they utter /tata/ or /kaka/ long
before they manage to produce the enormously difficult nasals, their
parents won't have the power to change the *conventionalization* of /mama/
= "mother" all on their own. They may well tell everyone that their child
"said" /takata/ long before /mama/, and they may even decide that in their
family from now on, /takata/ "means" "mother". Why not ? But it won't have
any consequences for the speech-community on the whole, which has
conventionalized "mummy" and the like long ago.

St.G.

Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332