[Lingtyp] addressing the daughter as Mummy

[Pier Marco Bertinetto]

Dear Sergey,
in Ayoreo (Zamucoan, spoken between Bolivia and Paraguay by about 5000
people) the interrogative
*cho rique* (to be read according to the Spanish orthography)
can have a number of interpretations. At least the following:
- what
- how
- how much
- when
Another interrogative element,
*gotique*
has not less than the following meanings:
- why
- which
On the other hand, for 'who' one finds the specialized word *gosi* (M.SG),
*gosode* (M.PL), *goto* (F.SG), *gotodie* (F.PL).
Best regards
Pier Marco


Il giorno sab 15 ago 2020 alle ore 21:24 Sergey Loesov <
sergeloesov at gmail.com> ha scritto:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> In various cultures (those I know of happen to be mostly Islamic) the form
> of address can be copied by the addressee. Thus, when a daughter addresses
> her mother as “Mummy”, the mother often reciprocates, saying to the
> daughter something like “yes, Mummy”, or “what, Mummy…” (Same of course
> with a son and his father.)
>
> In particular, I came across this kind of exchange in my fieldwork with
> Kurdish (Kurmanji) and some contemporary Aramaic varieties in Upper
> Mesopotamia and Syria, but this phenomenon is also current in the Soqotri
> language, an unwritten Semitic language spoken on the Socotra Island in the
> Indian Ocean, southeast of Yemen.
>
> Are we aware of explanations for this kind of usage? Are there
> cross-language studies of this kind of facts?
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> Sergey
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>


-- 

=========================================================
||||            Pier Marco  Bertinetto
             ------             professore emerito
            ///////          Scuola Normale Superiore
           -------	       p.za dei Cavalieri 7
          ///////    	         I-56126 PISA
         -------              phone: +39 050 509111
        ///////
       -------                        HOME
      ///////                   via Matteotti  197
     -------                   I-55049 Viareggio LU
    ///////                   phone:  +39 0584 652417
   -------                    cell.:  +39 368 3830251
=========================================================
       editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
  webpage <https://www.sns.it/it/bertinetto-pier-marco>
"Laboratorio di Linguistica" <http://linguistica.sns.it>
=========================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20200817/d2df72a7/attachment.htm>