Re: Baby/infant

Hi Philip, Charlie and all,

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Philip Newton wrote:
[snip]
> On 8/23/06, Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
> >  - Andean Spanish (IE, Romance) has "guagua" for "baby"; I
> > don't know its etymology.
>
> Sounds like onomatopoeia to me, though.
It's possible, but a knowledge of the indigenous languages
of the region might indicate a loanword with an etymology
from words with non-onomatopoeic significance.  Who knows?
I sure don't.


> >  - 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.
Yes.


> > "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"...
It actually shares the "né" (nu eta) with "néos", but I
thought a spelling pronunciation would be more helpful.
I *did* emphasise "*seems*", as this was only an
untutored guess at its etymology.  The point here is
surely to give Charlie suggestions that might be useful
in forming a word in his conlang, reconstructing similar
meanings by analogy; so for this purpose it's not that
important what the actual derivation of "nípio" ("népio")
is, as that it suggested the idea that "baby" might be
conveyed by combining the two notions "new" & "child".

Regards,
Yahya

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