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Part of
Historical Linguistics 2019: Selected papers from the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Canberra, 1–5 July 2019
Edited by Bethwyn Evans, Maria Kristina Gallego and Luisa Miceli
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 367] 2024
► pp. 59–74

Chapter 3
Phylogenetic signal in the lexicon

Are parental terms influenced by baby talk?

| Yale University
It has long been known that parental terms are poor indicators of shared genetic relationship because of their tendency to be influenced by features of “baby-talk”. However, change and stability of parental terms within language families has not been closely studied. Here I evaluate the stability of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ across three large language families. While terms which show features of child-directed speech do appear to show fewer signs of phylogenetic signal, very few of the results reach statistical significance. Though there is probably some influence of acquisition, it is not enough to swamp regular transmission and other processes of change. Therefore, while parental terms are inappropriate evidence for detecting remote relationships, such terms can be safely used in reconstruction.
Keywords: phylogenetic signal, infant speech, Pama-Nyungan, Indo-European, Austronesian, parental terms, kinship, language change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Principal components analysis
    • 4.2Phylogenetic signal
    • 4.3Phonological features
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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References (26)
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