Tata

[Craig Berry]

On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Michael Mccafferty wrote:

> Sure, Fran.  But more to the point: The point I was making is that an
> English speaking child would go for an imitation of the alveolar consonant
> of his parents' "Daddy" with reference to the initial question posed this
> morning.  Naturally, if the parents called the father "Papa," the child
> would probably tend to choose a bilabial.  It would be interesting to see
> if a child in an environment where "Daddy" is used came up with [papa].

Preverbal children come up with 'baba', 'dada', 'mama', 'tata', 'gaga',
'nana', 'papa', and many others.  Often the consonant is unclear.  The key
is that when they happen to get close to the local culture's kinship
terms, they get rewarded with lots of praise and attention.  This feedback
loop quickly trains them which sounds to use to trigger these reactions,
and indeed typically leads to one of the first assignments of meaning to a
sound (connecting 'mama' with mother and so forth).

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   |   Craig Berry - cberry at cinenet.net
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