The role of phonetic factors in parent reference
- 1 February 1985
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Child Language
- Vol. 12 (1) , 215-220
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900006334
Abstract
Throughout this century observers have commented on the beginning talker's evident preference for words denoting ‘father’ over words representing the meaning of ‘mother’. Bateman (1917) said that ‘the most frequently named object is the paternal parent’. Leopold (1948) stated that ‘papa…appears far more commonly as the first meaningful word than does mama’. In this paper I will review some of the reported data on parent reference and propose a phonetic account of the child's evident preference for paternal terms.Keywords
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