[Lingtyp] addressing the daughter as Mummy

Wed Jun 16 01:30:40 UTC 2021

K'iche' Maya has a very rich system for this, described beautifully by
James Mondloch in a paper that deserves to be far better known:

Mondloch, James L. "K'e? s: Quiche naming." *Journal of Mayan Linguistics* 2
(1980): 9-25.

The by-now familiar reciprocal address between grandparent and grandchild
occurs, as expecte. But in addition the system projects further kinship
relationships onto the designated grandchild.
So the young grandson can say "my wife" to denote "my grandmother".
The system represents a general logic of kinship mapping across
generations, not just an isolated idiom or naming practice.
Best,
Jack

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 10:59 AM Anne Tamm <TammA at ceu.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> Hungarian has *kisanyám* my little mother, but not typically in my urban
> sociolect.
> A couple of years ago there was a long discussion of related lexicon items
> on child language mailing lists.
> best
> Anne
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, August 24, 2020 9:54 AM
> *To:* David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
> *Cc:* list, typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] addressing the daughter as Mummy
>
> Hi everybody.
>
> I reported this as a reaction to the original request in a personal email,
> but now that there is so much wonderful data and reactions I might ask in
> the list:
>
> does anyone know of a pattern of address, formally both related and
> different to the one being discussed, where the apparently 'inverse use' of
> the term of address is placed inside a possessive construction, literally
> 'mother-Poss/Gen' addressing a child, 'aunt-Poss/Gen' to a nephew or niece
> etc. This occurs in (some parts of) Daghestan and I always wondered whether
> it was an adaptation / reinterpretation of the Near East / Georgian / etc
> pattern or an independent development.
>
> Michael Daniel
>
> пн, 24 авг. 2020 г. в 07:07, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>:
>
> 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>
> 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
> " 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>
> 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
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>
>
> --
> Dr. Nino Amiridze
>
> E-mail: Nino.Amiridze at gmail.com
> WWW: https://sites.google.com/site/ninoamiridze/
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>
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> --
> 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
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-- 

=======================================

John W. DuBois
Professor of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106
USA
Email: dubois at ucsb.eduZoom room: https://ucsb.zoom.us/my/dubois

Web page: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/dubois/
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