On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 13:42:59 -0600, Patrick Ryan
<
proto-language@...> wrote:
>The very concept of nursery words is infantile.
>
>An infant does _not_ assign meanings to words.
>
>An infant makes random sounds, and adults choose to reinforce some
>associations and discourage others in exactly the same way that _any_
>vocabulary item is taught.
That's not the point.
The point is that nursery words are re-created with every
new generation, so they are meaningless in long-range (or
even medium-range) linguistical comparison. In other words,
the fact that most Germanic languages have a word for
"father" starting with p- (pops, pap, pappa, Pappi, etc.) is
not an argument against Grimm's law.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...