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Article 7157 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: c99-aa@danube.Berkeley.EDU (c99 account)
Subject: Re: Word Mechanics (was: parts of "Brain and Mind") 
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dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield) writes:

>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. 
   Why not that it's wet or hungry?  Besides there is any number of acounts
   of infants' first words being something else (papa or other). There is 
   lot's of jokes in the families about that, I am sure.
   Also, sound "MA" seems to be very close to the sound "A" which perheps the
   most natural sounding for human (concider "R", "Woo", "F" instead...)

Dmitry Serebrennikov

    Dmitry Serebrennikov                         dmitry@ucsee.Berkeley.Edu
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