Good Natured Ribbing (2) [was Re: Refining early Basque criteria]

[Stefan Georg]

[ Moderator's note:
  Further discussions should move to private e-mail.  I believe that the topic
  has moved beyond interest for this list.
  --rma ]

>[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?

This is of course not an answerable question. It extends to the question
what kinds of individuals must possess what kinds of powers to make other
community members his speech habits ?
Of course, there are no such things which could be enumerated. Language
change is an invisible-hand process. Some changes do spread through the
community, some don't. The notion of selectional advantage plays some role
hear. Syllables like /mama/, /ama/ aso. do possess a selectional advantage
in that any future mother is quite likely to be able to tell that her child
is "talking" to her very early in its career as a language-user. This is
not so easy with sequences like "mushroom", "gobble-dee-gook" or
"Proto-Language", which uis why they rather seldom get conventionalized
with any meaning resembling "mum" or "dad". What is so difficult to
understand about this, that we have to go over and over the same few points
again ? Or, in other words, what are you going to tell us ? That  /mama/,
/ama/ and stuff lth. are as conventional and arbitrary as "asparagus",
"cruise missile" or "Little Rock" ? If you do think that after all, we can
end this discussion rather painlessly, since I won't be able to say
anything to this.

>[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.

Oh, so that's why you simply ignored this gibe, I see ;-)

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