[Sealang-l] Seeking Contributions to The Great Language Muster

[Language Muster]

Hello, linguists!


Andrew Nevins of University College London is revisiting Jakobson's
question of "Why 'mama' and 'papa".  That is, why do language across the
world exhibit similar sound patterns for the maternal and paternal kinship
terms?  Jakobson posed several additional questions that we aim to answer:
what is the frequency of kinship terms that use nasal or oral consonants?  How
often do both kinship terms contain a labial or dental sound?  What kinds
of sound patterns exist for relations beyond just the mother and father?  The
opportunity for more research was - and is - rich and rife.



We are currently collecting data from over 500 languages in order to
revisit these questions.  The scope of this project is obviously huge, and
its potential implications are exciting, especially for the fields of
language development and linguistic anthropology.



But we need your help!



We've designed an internet survey (5 minutes to complete, maximum!)  to
help us collect the data from native speakers, professional linguists and
language enthusiasts.  It lives here:
https://sites.google.com/view/thegreatlanguagemuster/home



In the spirit of our philosophy that good science happens only when good
data are shared, we plan on making all the data collected open source for
free use by linguists and anthropologists.



For more information, and to participate, please visit:
https://sites.google.com/view/thegreatlanguagemuster/home
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