[Lingtyp] addressing the daughter as Mummy
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Thu Aug 20 11:05:56 UTC 2020
As a footnote to Eitan's comments on Hebrew, I would add that the form
/mama-le/, with the Yiddish-origin diminutive, is used not only by
mothers addressing their children, but by extension also as an
affectionate address term to persons of any gender, age and parental
status (as I myself can attest to, as the occasional fortunate addressee).
On 20/08/2020 08:22, Eitan Grossman wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Modern Hebrew also has this phenomenon, e.g., /mami/ or /mama/ ('mom')
> and /abuya/ ('my father'). Its sources seem to be both Maghrebi
> Judeo-Arabic and Palestinian Arabic, but it also makes sense that it
> might also come from Kurdish via Neo-Aramaic. Interestingly, a common
> term is/aba-le/ (father-DIM), which takes a Yiddish-origin
> diminutive suffix on an Aramaic-origin noun, while the very use of the
> 'father' term for a child is patterned on Arabic.
>
> In Beduin Arabic of the Negev, these reversed kin terms are extremely
> extensive and seem to apply to pretty much any kin relationship.
> Henkin has written about this a lot, e.g., Ch 10 of her 2010. Negev
> Arabic: Dialectal, Sociolinguistic, and Stylistic Variation.
> Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. It's also worth checking out her work on
> cursing, which can involve what looks like 'self-cursing' due to the
> kinship term reversal.
>
> Eitan
>
>
> Eitan Grossman
> Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
> Chair, Department of Linguistics
> Hebrew University of Jerusalem
> Tel: +972 2 588 3809
> Fax: +972 2 588 1224
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 7:27 AM Nino Amiridze <nino.amiridze at gmail.com
> <mailto:nino.amiridze at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Dear Sergey,
>
> Georgian (Kartvelian) has the phenomenon. Young people may get
> addressed by their older relatives by the term that refers to the
> relatives themselves. For instance, if a grandmother addresses her
> grandson (say, Giorgi), she may address him by uttering (a) or (b):
>
> (a) giorgi, modi chemtan!
> Giorgi, come to.me <http://to.me>
> " Giorgi, come to me!"
>
> or
>
> (b) bebia/bebiko, modi chemtan!
> grandmother/granny, come to me
> Lit.: grandmother, come to me!
> "Giorgi, come to me!"
>
> This phenomenon is discussed in Boeder 1988
> (http://www.staff.uni-oldenburg.de/winfried.boeder/download/52_Boeder_1988_Ueber_einige_Anredeformen_imKaukasus.pdf),
> where he mentions similar cases in Lebanese Arabic described in
> Ayoub 1964 and Southern Italian dialects by Spitzer 1928. In both
> cases, the phenomenon is known from baby talk, when grown ups try
> to lower themselves to the level of children. As a result, a role
> substitution happens. Boeder brings Willis 1977 as a reference,
> according to which the role substitution is an important play when
> children and grown ups communicate in English baby talk.
>
> For me, as a native Georgian speaker, the explanation does not
> exactly make sense for Georgian. Rather, the address forms have
> always been a shortened forms of affectionate formulas:
>
> bebia [genacvalos / shemogevlos], modi chemtan!
> grandmother [will.secrifice.herself.for.you], come to me
> '"X, come to me" (where X is a name of a grandkid)
>
> I wonder what other native speakers have to say about the role
> substitution in Georgian. And I would be curious to learn whether
> the mentioned languages or others illustrating the phenomenon can
> have the 'role mirroring' due to shortening of blessing formulas.
>
> References:
>
> Ayoub, Millicent R. 1964. Bi-polarity in Arabic kinship terms. In
> Horace G. Lunt (ed.). Proceedings of the Ninth International
> Congress of Linguists. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 1100-1106.
>
> Boeder, Winfried, 1988. Über einige Anredeformen im Kaukasus.
> Georgika, Heft 11, pp. 11-20.
>
> Spitzer, Leo, 1928. Über Personenvertauschung in der Ammensprache.
> In L. Spitzer, Stilstudien. Hueber, München, 1928, pp. 26-38.
>
> Wills, Dorothy Davis, 1977. Participant deixis in English baby
> talk. In: C.E. Snow and Ch. A. Ferguson (eds.), Talking to
> Children. Language Input and Acquisition. Papers from a conference
> sponsored by the Committee on Sociolinguistics of the Social
> Science Research Council (USA). Cambridge, Cambridge University
> Press, pp. 271-295.
>
> Best regards,
> Nino
>
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 9:26 PM Sergey Loesov
> <sergeloesov at gmail.com <mailto:sergeloesov at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> 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
> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Nino Amiridze
>
> E-mail: Nino.Amiridze at gmail.com <mailto:Nino.Amiridze at gmail.com>
> WWW: https://sites.google.com/site/ninoamiridze/
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20200820/5005d5ee/attachment.htm>
More information about the Lingtyp
mailing list