"mama" Syndrome

[iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

	So, Mr. Gordon, exactly which of the following propositions is
"blatantly moronic"?

	1) That languages of the world do show a striking tendency to have
	words for 'mother' that begin with /m-/".  (Counting "nursery
	words", probably something close to 100 percent.)

	2) That this is not due to common descent from "Proto-World".

	3) That this is not due to words that are [+ primary care-giver]
	being marked as [+ /m-/] as part of "Universal Grammar".

	4) That it is an artifact of babbling and the mother/infant
	relationship, in that mothers tend to attribute the meaning
	'mother' to things that the infant is merely babbling.

	5) That if mere babbbles can be given a meaning that applies to
	one party in the mother/infant relationship, they can be given a
	meaning that applies to the other party.  If the infant is to be
	regarded as speaking, this other party would have to be what we
	call "1st person.

	I note as well that what we have here (apart from the usual
failure to communicate) is one linguist who reconstructs Nostratic 1st
person pronouns without being aware that the distribution of sounds in
these is not in fact random (which is to say that the critical leverage we
get in other cases from the idea that "it can't be a coincidence" is
lacking) and another who points out the problem with this.  So here is
another question:  which of these two is more properly described as "not
doing his job"?  If you are going to start using expresions like
"blatantly moronic" and "not doing his job", then you will have to start
answering questions like these.

					DLW