Re: Family terms [was: Kluge's Law in Italic?]

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 68558
Date: 2012-02-14

W dniu 2012-02-14 22:35, dgkilday57 pisze:

> Georgian <mama> 'father' and <deda> 'mother' demolish the alleged
> universal connection between /m/ and 'mother', 'breast', 'milk', etc.

I'm not claiming it's universal (let alone inherited from
"Proto-World"), just very common, and for very natural reasons. I could
add Mandarin <mama>, Swahili <mama>, Vietnamese <me.>, Ojibwe
<nimaamaa>, Basque <ama> and scores of other languages to the list.
/mama/, /nana/, /dada/ etc. must have been lexicalised innumerable times
since the dawn of human speech. The Georgian words only show that they
are not proto-words but independent adaptations of baby noises in
various languages. So does Ngaanyatjarra (Pama-Nyungan), where <mama>
also means 'father'.

Piotr