From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 42715
Date: 2006-01-02
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "Patrick Ryan" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 8:58 PM
Subject: 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'.
***
Patrick:
Then explain please what is being "interpreted"?
***
>
> >>> 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.
***
Patrick:
Absolutely and fundamentally wrong and illogical on top of it.
If /ma/ exists in the parents vocabulary, it cannot be "re-created" as you
state. It already has been created - perhaps thousands of year ago. And it
is still here.
Two ma's do not make anything right or wrong.
***
> 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.)
***
Patrick:
Can you not understand that something that is already there cannot be
reintroduced?
To what vocabulary do you refer?
***
***
> > They are never lost?
>
> Even within a single family the familiar, informal term can
> change from one generation to the next.
***
Patrick:
More illogic! If /ma/ was lost, how could it be reintroduced? How lost could
that be?
***