From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!utcsri!rpi!think.com!ames!sun-barr!west.West.Sun.COM!smaug.West.Sun.COM!dab Wed Oct 14 14:58:20 EDT 1992
Article 7182 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: "Mama"
Date: 9 Oct 1992 17:32:00 GMT
Organization: x
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Message-ID: <1b4fmgINN87h@smaug.West.Sun.COM>
References: <1992Oct8.175921.28043@gallant.apple.com> <1992Oct9.025636.27460@news.media.mit.edu> <2AD5AA6F.109E@deneva.sdd.trw.com>
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shrdlu@willow.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True) writes:
>Not every culture uses the
>phoneme "ma" in the word for mother. There are some languages in which
>the infant sound for mother has no recognizable "m" or "a" sound at
>all.

I don't think we disagree here.
The original point on this thread was that the assignment of the
word "mama" to the concept of one's mother was not completely
arbitrary.  There are reasons why that particular word is more
likely to denote that meaning than a word chosen at random.  This
was presented as a notable exception to a statement that generally
the assignment of words to meaning is arbitrary.  This is much
weaker than saying that that assignment would necessarily appear
in every language.

>Babies would call their mothers "ooooo" if anything; I've been
>there, and the mouth is just not shaped in any way that would
>cause the sound "ma" to come out.

Here I must disagree; my son is two months old.  His first "talking"
sound was "ahhh".  When I take him through the five basic vowels he
does "ahhh" the easiest, though "ooooo" ("u") was easy to teach him.
He can get "ohhhh" ("o") if he works at it.  "Eeeee" ("i") I have a
hard time getting him to imitate very well, and I haven't heard him
say h"ey" ("e") yet.  To get "ahhh" just requires dropping the mouth
open ("open your mouth and say 'Ahhhh'"); to say "ooooo" requires
shaping the mouth and lips, which is harder.  To get from "ahhh"
to "ma" simply requires starting the vocal chords with mouth closed
and then dropping the mouth open.  It's hard to imagine a simpler
syllable to voice than "ma".

I suspect this horse is dead; I'll try to stop beating it now.

Dave
-- 
	Truth is an evaluation of a statement within a context.


