In a process parallel to the one just described, the first consonants acquired are stops and labials -- pronounced using the lips (perhaps connected to a baby's natural sucking movement?) -- and the first meaningful distinction acquired is generally that between nasal consonants (/m/) and oral consonants (/p/, /b/); the second is the one which separates labials (/p/, //b/, /m/) from dentals (/t/, /d/, /h/). We recognize straightaway the initial consonants of the first words pronounced by children all over the world: mummy, daddy, mama, papa (French), <...>1, mama, tata (Serbo-Croat), etc.
Marina Yaguello. Language Through the Looking Glass: Exploring Language and Linguistics
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Nor should it be forgotten that a kiss - all romantic misconceptions to the contrary - involves basically only a lip click (or two), symbol Θ. In some Bushman languages Θ actually occurs as a phoneme.
Edgar A. Gregersen. Language in Africa: An Introductory Survey.
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
The observation that words like mama and papa are widespread in human languages is not new. In fact, it was made in the 1950s by the anthropologist George P. Murdoch. In 1959, in response to an appeal for an explanation by Murdoch, Roman Jakobson (my academic "grandfather") published a paper entitled "Why 'mama' and 'papa'?", in which he offered the explanation that the mama and papa words come about through the wishful thinking of parents. Before babies start to speak, they go through a period of what linguists call babbling in which they experiment with their vocal tracts and make lots of meaningless noises. Parents don't realize this, though, and eager to hear their child speak, attempt to interpret their baby's vocalizations as words. Naturally, they are keen on the idea that the baby is addressing them, so they assign the meanings "mother" and "father" to the baby's first "words". It happens that certain consonants, such as [p],[t],[b],[d],[m],and [n] are among the sounds that babies produce frequently in the early stages of babbling, as are vowels like [a], so the early "words" perceived by parents are things like [papa], [mama], and [dada]. They aren't actually words, but the parents perceive them as such and assign them the meanings "father" and "mother".
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001428.html
According to the reports in the New Scientist and The Telegraph Bancel and de l'Etang surveyed 1000 languages for which they were able to obtain detailed information on kinship terms and found that 700 of them contained the word "papa" with the meaning "father" or "male relative on the father's side".
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
...explanation that the mama and papa words come about through the wishful thinking of parents.
SCJP, SCJD, SCWCD.
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