Re[4]: [tied] Re: Etymology of PIE *ph2ter

At 6:31:08 PM on Sunday, January 1, 2006, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>

>>> Utter ridiculous!

>>> Who re-creates them?

>> Parental interpretation and reinforcement combining with
>> the normal sequence of development of infant babbling.

> Precisely. Just like normal language training!

No, it isn't. Words like <mouse> and <foot> obviously
cannot be attributed to parental interpretation of infant
babbling.

> And how old are these parentally sanctioned words?

Words like <pop>, <pops>, <pappy>, <baba>, <da>, <dad(dy)>,
<tad>, <tata>, <mom(my)>, <mum(my)>, <ma(ma)>, <mama>, etc.?
Who knows? They're continually being re-created. I see
that you've asked Etherman why this is the case; the answer
is implicit in the mechanism that I gave in my previous
post, still visible at the top of this one.

[...]

Brian