Re[6]: [tied] Re: Etymology of PIE *ph2ter

At 8:21:47 PM on Sunday, January 1, 2006, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

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

>> 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.

> Interpretation? What do you think the infant intends to
> convey?

I have no reason to suppose that the infant initially
intends to convey anything in particular by playing with its
vocal organs, any more than it does when it plays with its
hands and feet by waving them about. Parents, on the other
hand, are in general quite happy to suppose that they are
being 'named'.

>>> 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.

> Why should they need to be recreated?

I said nothing about need; the conditions for continuous
reintroduction exist, whether they're needed or not.
However, the fact that they keep cropping up despite regular
sound changes that ought to affect them is good evidence of
continuous reintroduction. (By the way, your suggestion
that 'Grimm's Law needs to be updated to provide for
vocabulary used within the family circle' seems a bit
misguided: there's a great deal of vocabulary used -- and
used frequently -- within the family circle that does not
exhibit such phoenix-like qualities.)

> They are never lost?

Even within a single family the familiar, informal term can
change from one generation to the next.

Brian