Re: Does every language family contain one with "ma-" "da-" "ta-" words for parents?

Drat. Went to Paul rather than the list....
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Paul Bennett wrote:

(snip some)
> I'd say the definition is more like:
>
> 1) A "ma" word contains a bilabial or labiodental nasal followed by an
> open and/or back vowel.
>
> 2) A "da" word contains an apical stop followed by an open and/or back
> vowel.
>
> 3) Every language family contains at least one language with a "ma" word
> and a "da" word, one of which is a term for "mother" and the other is a
> term for "father".
>
> It's a pretty vague constraint, but we're talking about an awfully large
> number of languages, not all of which have the same set of phonemes.
A large number of _known_ languages, that have existed in recorded form
(very broadly speaking) in the past ±5000 yrs. There is probably an even
greater number that rose, flourished and died, blooming all unknown, in the
X-thousand years prior to that. How did the Lascaux Cave painters describe
their works?

There's also the problem that we're talking about "nursery" words, that
arise literally out of the mouths of babes (and their doting parents), are
constantly reinvented, and notoriously resistant to/exempt from the usual
sound changes. Since they're based on babies' acquisition sequences, I would
guess we'll never find forms like /dZr=/ or /gwyK/.


> I'm tempted to allow a "weak form" of (1) which is generalized to "any
> nasal",
That seems reasonable, except that AFAIK there are none with a velar nasal;
of course.....

> but I think I'll have to wait to see how the data comes out before
> deciding what my claims[*] actually are.
>
FWIW, Proto-Austronesian has *bapa and *ama 'father', *ibu, *indu and *ina
'mother'. "bapa/k" and "ibu" survive as the official words in Ml/Indonesian;
*ama and *ina in lots of other areas. (And innovations like Bugis /ambo?/
'father', with /indo?/ 'mother'.) Whether there are also nursery terms, I
know not.

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