first words

[Barbara Davis]

On the deeper origins of 'daddy' and 'mommy' as first words: Dean Falk's
2004 BBS commentary "Prelinguistic evolution in early hominids: Whence
motherese?" considers the importance of  increasing necessity for early
hominid mothers to be separated from their babies while foraging as creating
selection pressures for an elaboration of the dyadic vocal communication
pattern. She suggests an early linkage between nasal demand sounds and the
word for female parent. For contrast, the label for male parent would
be oral. This potential hypothesis for early contrastive use of 'daddy' and
'mommy' in first vocabularies is emphasized in a study of kinship terms in
474 contemporary languages, where Murdock found that 78% of words for mother
began with a nasal consonant while 66% of words for father began with an
oral consonant. Early sounds available to the infant production system
include both [b] and [d], so the concept of ease is not easy to establish.
 Babs Davis



On 9/13/06, Erika Hoff <ehoff at fau.edu> wrote:
>
> I've been reading these for days and can no longer resist adding my data.
> My
> son's first word was "hiya" said in greeting, and my daughter's first word
> was "uh-oh" said as commentary on something about to fall off a table.
> Both
> babbled da-da-da before this, but I never felt compelled to impute
> meaning.
>
> Erika Hoff
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:
> info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]
> On Behalf Of Alison Crutchley
> Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 3:38 AM
> To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
> Subject: RE: first words
>
> Tina highlights part of the difficulty in establishing what a 'first word'
> is. In the first few months we made up stories for our son involving elk,
> igloo(s) and legs, as these were all 'words' that he produced on a fairly
> regular basis. Of course there was no reason to think he was 'using' these
> 'words'. (Not many igloos in Yorkshire, although I did jump when I was
> carrying him down the road in the sling at about 4 months and he shouted
> 'Bears!').
>
> So it's not just the children who may be relying on a convergence of
> linguistic and non-linguistic cues to establish meanings...
>
> Incidentally, I think our son's first 'real' word was 'hiya' - only said
> when clamping a phone (or phone-shaped object) to his ear.
>
> Alison
>
>
>
> ............................................................................
> Dr Alison Crutchley
> Course Leader, English Language
> School of Music, Humanities and Media
> University of Huddersfield
> Queensgate
> Huddersfield, UK. HD1 3DH
>
> a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk
> http://www.hud.ac.uk/mh/english/research/ac.htm
>
> ............................................................................
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of tina.bennett
> Sent: Tue 12/09/2006 10:17 PM
> To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
> Subject:
>
>
>
> One of my daughters used, as her first word (at
> about 6 months) /da/, meaning "that", with rising intonation,
> accompanied by pointing to objects she wanted us to name.
>
> She also produced a very credible "hi" when just
> two weeks old and we were ignoring her in favor
> of a football game on television. Even my father,
> a speech pathologist, heard it and his mouth dropped open.
> It was the first thing we used to say to her every time we
> initiated interactions. But of course
> it is impossible for a newborn to have done such a thing.
>
> -Tina Bennett-Kastor
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Barbara L. Davis, Ph.D.
Professor and Graduate Advisor
Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders
1 University Station, A1100
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1089

(512) 471-1929 office phone
(512) 471-2957 office fax
babs at mail.utexas.edu
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