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The role of phonetic factors in parent reference*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John L. Locke
John L. Locke
Affiliation:
Massachusetts General Hospital
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Extract

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.

Information

Type
Notes and discussion
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 1985, pp. 215 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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