Refining early Basque criteria

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Georg" <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 9:17 AM

[PR previously]

>>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 self-designation --- a very rare occurrence.

[SG]
>No, Pat, this is independent of what a given child utters "first" to its
>given mother.

[PR]
This is truly a Grimm explanation. *What* child babbled /ma/ first so that
its pristine syllable could be adopted by its mother as a self-designation,
and with what authority did she insist (conventionalize) the syllable so
that all subsequent mothers had to accept her choice?

[SG]
>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.

[PR]
I was not born in Arkansas, educated here, or have I lived most of my life
here, so gentle gibes against Arkansas and Arkansans are absolutely without
interest to me.

<snip>

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
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