Amy and the vocative

[pne]

When Amy calls somebody or something, she uses two syllables and a descending minor third(? — roughly from G to E on a C-major scale, I think).

If what she's calling only has a one-syllable name, she'll repeat the syllable in order to call it. This means that some nouns are homophones in the vocative but not the nominative case, I suppose :)

This is most noticeable with "Ma-ma" and "Fi-fi", since the first can be either "Mama" (Mummy) or "Ma" (Martin; he of the default userpic), and the second can be either "Fi" (a Miffy doll that Stella sewed for her) or "Fifi" (Sophie, a… hand-puppet might be the name for it; a big doll where you can put your arms into hers to move them or your hand into the mouth).

Comments

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but it sounds like that are some proper nouns that differ in the nominative and vocative by a toneme instead of a "proper" phoneme. I'd be tempted to pay attention to other possible uses of phonemic tone...

[pne.livejournal.com]

it sounds like that are some proper nouns that differ in the nominative and vocative by a toneme instead of a "proper" phoneme.

You know what -- I think you're right.

I'd be tempted to pay attention to other possible uses of phonemic tone...

Heh :)

[arthur-sc-king.livejournal.com]

The descending minor third is, like, universal. Transcends even the whole North America-Western Europe thing, apparently. It's also the primary interval in name-calling, "nyah nyah ne-nyah nyah" (G E A-G G, for example), and similar child-like stuff.

Not sure why, because as a rational number (ratio between the frequencies of the notes), it's not one that seems "obvious": it's 6/5 (or 5/6), whereas a major third is 4/5, a perfect fourth is 3/4, and a perfect fifth is 2/3, so you'd think one of those might pop up first. Nope, the minor third is the winner in children's games etc. every time. (It's also, IIRC, the most common interval for European ambulances and police sirens.)

Go figure.