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Article 7140 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Message-ID: <1992Oct6.170950.19297@usl.edu>
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:09:50 GMT
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>From: dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield) writes:

>mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H) writes:
>>Derrida and De Sausare (sp.?) argue rather convincingly that language is
>>arbitrary, and there is no real reason why any particular word, letter, or    
>>phoneme need mean what we accept it to mean.

>The origin of the word "mama" (and its close relatives in other languages)
>appears to contradict that statement.  "Ma" is one of the easiest syllables
>to utter, and is one of the first spoken by infants.  The first entity that
>an infant wants to refer to is his mother.  The association of that word to
>that concept was not arbitrary.  Reference the OED for more detail.

Yes, mama is one of the easiest things for an infant to say, so it does.  But
is there anything inherent in the sound or form of "mama" that links it to the
actual physical mother?  What if the father always responded when the child 
said "mama", would not the infant then assume that "mama" meant father?  Would
not the meaning of "mama" then BE father?  We train a child to expect "mama"
to indicate mother.  These is a behavioral thing.  Why "mama"?  because it is 
convenient,  not because "mama" has any inherent meaning.

De Saussare goes into this to some depth.  He was a Linguist, and had
definitely seen the OED.  I'm not denying philology here--I know that many
words spring out of other words and seem to have logical reasons for what they
mean.  Language is a code, and it necessarily has some structure,  but there is
no real substantial connection between that code and what it represents other 
than our generally accepted associations.  Onomatopoeia not withstanding.

Matthew H. Flynn


