Re: Baby/infant

On 8/22/06, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:
> * caeruleancentaur said on 2006-08-22 22:26:40 +0200
> > I'm looking for a word for "baby/infant" in a natlang that has not
> > evolved from "indistinct speech" (baba > baby) or from "not speaking"
> > (in-fans > infant).  Does anyone know of such?
>
> Norwegian "spedbarn", a baby prior to walking. I assume the "sped-" is
> the same as "sped" meaning simply "small, slight in size", but for all I
> know it might have something to do with truffles...
German also has "Kleinkind" for, roughly, "toddler" (so a bit past
"baby/infant"). Literally, "smallchild".



On 8/23/06, Chris Peters <beta_leonis@...> wrote:
> I'm not entirely sure if this qualifies, but the Japanese word "akachan"
> might qualify.  I don't know the etymology of "aka-",
It's spelled with the character for "red" (akai). This may or may not
mean that the morpheme is indeed the same -- the character might have
been used because the sound was the same and it "seemed" appropriate,
even if there is etymologically no relationship.

There's also "akanbou" for child, again written with "red"; "bou" is
written with a character meaning "(Buddhist) priest" or, apparently,
"boy".



On 8/23/06, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:
>  - Andean Spanish (IE, Romance) has "guagua" for "baby"; I don't know its
> etymology.
Sounds like onomatopoeia to me, though.

>  - Greek (IE) has "vréfos" for "infant, baby", "nípio" for "infant, baby,
> newborn child", and "moró" for "baby".
"Moró" seems to be the neuter singular of "morós" = "foolish, stupid,
idiotic", so this is probably the "incapable of speech" thing.

> "nípio" *seems* to combine the roots
> for "new" and "child".
Well, it does share the consonant n- with "néos" and the consonant p-
with "paidí"...

There's also "neognó" for "nursling, suckling, new-born baby", which
seems more clearly related to "néos" (new). I presume the second part
has the same g-n as gennó "bear, give birth to" and possibly words
such as geneá/geniá "generation; ancestry"; génos "lineage; species;
genus"; génesi "creation; Genesis"; and maybe gínomai "become".

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>