Bilabials are fun!

[pne]

Remember how a couple of days ago I wrote about Amy's first plosive?

She seems to have mastered it now; today she often said lovely words such as [æbæbæwæwæbæbæbæβæβæbæbæwæbæbæβæβæbæbæwæwæbæbæ]. (Judging by the length of the word, her "native language" is presumably something agglutinative. And with a fairly minimal phonology.) And Stella said she's been talking like that most of the day.

So, mostly [b] (voiced bilabial stop) but also several bilabial approximants and the odd voiced bilabial fricative. Bilabials certainly seem to be her thing. (And I think the vowel is [æ] rather than [a]. You could make a case for it being phonemically /a/, though, I guess.)

That follows the learning pattern she's already shown in a few other things: do something once, then several days later start doing it again, this time consistently.

Tomorrow, [æbæbæbæbæ] ("the world")!

Comments

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Probably the reason why the bilabial nasal seems to be nearly universally present in words for "mother", from Navajo to English.

Except for Georgian, that is...

[robnorth.livejournal.com]

What is it in Georgian?

(And I assume we're talking Central-Asian-Georgian, not Atlanta-Georgian? %-)

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's right. :P

In Georgian, mama actually means father - and deda means mother.