Investigating what the words father and mother mean

Language& Communicorion, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 245-269, I’983 Printed in Great Britain.

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SALIKOKO S. MUFWENE 1. introduction

This paper is the report of a two-fold survey conducted by the author in Chicago in Fall 1979. It is about the usage of the lexical items father and mother in (American) English. Both parts of the survey were given in one package as a 45-60 min task. The first part consisted of a selected number of semantically varied sentences involving basic-nominal and denominal-verbal uses of the items both in the domain of kinship and outside this domain. The sentences also varied in presenting either prototypical or non-prototypical contexts for the uses of the items. The non-prototypical contexts involved, for instance, mismatchings of the subject and the predication in the assignment of SEX features. The second part of the survey consisted of a short questionnaire. This included ten multiplechoice questions (each with an open-answer option) on various denotational conditions on the usage of the items father and mother qua kinship terms. It included in addition two open questions in which the informants were asked to formulate in their own words what they thought are the meanings of these items. All other relevant aspects of the survey, including further information on the number and selection of the informants, are discussed more opportunely in sections 3 and 4 below. The main purpose of the survey was to discern both through the acceptability judgements of the informants on the sentences and through their answers to the questionnaire the semantic parameters which are most significant in the basic meanings of the terms father and mother. In connection with this central issue, it was also thought relevant to investigate exactly how native speakers distinguish the meanings of these kinship terms from one another. In particular, I wished to examine whether they are indeed considered by native speakers as SEX-opposites but otherwise semantically identical in all other respects, i.e., whether they are opposed to one another in the same way as the items waiter and waitress may be said to be. As for the general conception of the survey, aside from investigating to what extent analyses of kinship based solely or mostly on questionnaires should be dependable (through evaluating how consistent the subjects would remain with themselves in both parts of the survey), the main reason for devising the survey in two parts was comparative and intended to see if one approach could highlight aspects of the issues which the other approach has failed to shed light on. It was particularly hoped that the 45 diversified sentences could reserve some rewarding surprise in uncovering semantic and/or underlying structural aspects of the elusive meanings1 of kinship terms in general which have not been considered relevant before. The ten multiple-choice questions of the questionnaire were also formulated in such a way as to make it possible for the investigator to detect significant parameters in the usage of the terms even through seemingly inconsistent answers, as well as to find out whether these were generally in agreement or in conflict with those discerned through 245

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the acceptability judgements. The two open questions were intended to find out how accurate (if helpful) the informants may be in suggesting their own definitions of the terms under analysis and how consistent these definitions are with their spontaneous judgements on the sentences and with their answers to the multiple-choice questions. The reader who goes through the details of Appendix 1 will also notice that a few things could be tested through the sentences which could not be investigated through the questionnaire. Much of this is discussed in sections 3 and 4. It need not be emphasized here how useful a survey may be in the kind of analysis undertaken here in particularly highlighting variation, whether idiolectal or socio-dialectal. Interidiolectal variation is especially highlighted in Appendix 1. 2. About the meanings of father and mother In both cultural anthropology and linguistics formal semantic analyses have essentially capitalized on a biogenetic conception of kinship terminologies.2 These analyses, and even the few which in formal linguistics represent attempts to define them with more emphasis on the social significance of the terms (see, e.g., Gruber, 1973; Mufwene, 1977, 1980), have generally also carried along the assumption that the kinship terms father and mother are bipolar semantic opposites on the dimension of SEX. This may be observed in, e.g., the componential analysis formulae in (l), which are paraphrased from Goodenough (1965, p. 285) the alternative analyses in (2), which are paraphrased from Kay (1974, p. 126) or those in (3), which should have been proposed in Mufwene (1980) (and in which, among other things, REAR has been substituted for the original underlying predicate RAISE): (la) (b) (2a) (b) (3a) (b)

futhecmale, consanguineal, senior, lineal, one unit of genealogical distance from Ego mother:female, consanguineal, senior, lineal, one unit of genealogical distance from Ego fither:PARENT (xy) and MALE x mother:PARENT (xy) and FEMALE x fathecENGENDER and/or REAR (xy) and MALE x mothecENGENDER and/or REAR (xy) and FEMALE x

Definitions (l), and to a certain extent (2),3 illustrate both the exclusively biogenetic conception of the meanings of kinship terms in formal semantics and the interpretation of father and mother as otherwise identical in their meanings except for the fact that they incorporate different semantic values on the dimension of SEX. Definitions (3), on which this paper will elaborate, illustrate only the second position. This theoretical assumption (thatfather and mother are semantic bipolar opposites) has undoubtedly found support in English due to the existence of the putative superordinate term parent, which is assumed to denote only the common properties of father and mother. The most explicit discussion of this in formal linguistic literature is perhaps that in Gruber (1973, p. 447), who assumes that the meanings of beget and bear are incorporated in the meanings of father and mother respectively. Positing the underlying verb PARENT for the putative common meaning of father and mother, Gruber says that ‘this underlying verb would be the common element of the English verbs beget for MALE and bear for FEMALE’. He comments on the same page and in the same paragraph (twice)

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that the concepts of father and mother are ‘necessary complements’ the following page he notes in addition:

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of one another. On

. . in English . . . there is no sexually neutral word for both ‘beget’ and ‘bear’. It is not unlikely that the verb (PARENT) may be the universal underlying basis for sex specification (not including grammatical gender), implying that the notion of parenthood underlies the notion of sex. For example, a female is a ‘potential mother’ rather than a mother being a ‘female parent’ (p. 448).

The only linguist to my knowledge who has not adopted the assumption that father and mother are mere sex opposites is Wierzbicka (1980, in particular), even though, as illustrated by her definitions in (4) (pp. 453, her conception of the meanings of kinship terms is undisputably also exclusively biogenetic:4 (4a) ‘X is Y’s father = there was a time when Y’s body was inside Z’s body and could be thought of as part of Z’s body becoming the body of another human being because before that there was a time when X introduced into Z’s body something that was inside his body and could be thought of as part of his body’ (b) ‘X is Y’s mother = there was a time when Y’s body was inside X’s body and could be thought of as part of X’s body becoming the body of another human being. ’ Wierzbicka’s rejection of the ‘symmetrical’ analyses of the terms father and mother is particularly based on the following three of the five reasons she gives on pp. 70-71: (i) [Such analyses] fail to account for many intuitively felt semantic relations such as that between ‘mother’ and ‘birth’ or between ‘father’ and ‘begetting’. (ii) [They posit] a symmetry where in fact there is none. For an ordinary person a mother is not simply a female equivalent of the father (a kind of female father). The concept of ‘father’ differs from that of ‘mother’ much more deeply than ‘brother’ does from ‘sister’ or ‘son’ from ‘daughter’. In fucb the concept of ‘father’presupposes that of ‘mother’(but not vice-versa). (Emphases mine) (iii) [They fail] to account for the non-existence of lexical items corresponding to ‘parent’ in many languages. (. . .) The available evidence seems to indicate that there are societies which do not have the concept ‘parent’ (. . .), but which nontheless do have a concept of ‘mother’. The concept of ‘mother’ seems to be much more fundamental and much simpler than the concept of ‘parent’. . . .

Some details of Wierzbicka’s arguments may be disputed, such as whether ‘begetting’ and ‘giving birth’ are necessary conditions for fatherhood and motherhood respectively, even if in all ideal cases societies would prefer for these to obtain. Another disputable assumption is whether, either by her own definitions or in actuality, motherhood has precedence over fatherhood. (But cf. Goodenough’s [1970] conception of the nuclear family as based on the mother and her offspring.) However, parts of her arguments are quite relevant and thought-provoking enough to prompt both a re-examination of the traditional position articulated by Gruber and a re-investigation of the meanings of the termsfather and mother in the first place. Even if the (accomplishment) verb beget and the (stative) verb bear are semantically opposed to one another in a way which is reminiscent of the opposition between father and mother, Gruber appears clearly to be misguided in reducing the opposition between the two verbs (putatively underlying the concepts of j&her and mother respectively) to a mere SEX opposition. And if the meanings offather and mother may indeed be correlated with those of the verbs beget and bear, then maybe the opposition between the two is more complex (and elusive) than has been assumed so far by most semanticists. It is hoped that the following analysis of the survey will shed some light both. on the issue of the exclusively biogenetic or social conceptions of kinship and kinship terminologies and on that of the semantic oppositeness offather and mother.

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3. Acceptability judgements on sentences 3.1. Conception of the first part of survey Section 3.2 below is the analysis of the reactions of some of the informants to the first task they were asked to do in the survey, viz., rate on a scale of 4-l the acceptability of 45 sentences containing the lexical items father and mother. The scale of ratings corresponds to the following: 4 = ‘completely normal sentence’, 3 = ‘slightly odd’, 2 = ‘quite odd although such sentences are probably heard now and then’, and 1 = ‘no native speaker of [American] English would ever use the word that way’. The informants included 70 native speakers of American English solicited quasirandomly from among professors and students at the University of Chicago (about half of the investigated population), high school students and teachers, as well as some blueand white-collar workers from Michael Reese Hospital. In terms of sex and age groups they consisted of 27 adult males and 32 adult females whose ages varied from 21 to 59 yr, of 3 teenage males and 5 teenage females whose ages varied from 13 to 15 yr, and of 3 nineteen-year-old females who are represented in the appendix as a ‘transitional group’. These groupings were partly inspired by the ways in which their acceptability judgements vary inter-individually. Information was also collected (on the anonymous forms of the survey) regarding the level of forma1 education and the socio-economic and ethnic affiliations of the informants (who included, in particular, Caucasians, Jews and Blacks, though the distribution was rather uneven). However, these variables had to be overlooked after no significant correlation could be established between the ethnic backgrounds of the informants and variation in their acceptability judgements. What appeared to be more significant were variations in terms of age and sex. All processed figures are given in Appendix 2. Sex differences appear to be more significant among teenagers than among the adult informants, though it should be noted that the sample was very limited. Hence the perspective of variation is limited here to the tabulation of the results of the survey in Appendix 1, leaving it to more concerned scholars to investigate further how significant this may be, in particular from a developmental point of view. Though all the figures are given in the appendix for the sake of comparison, the discussion in 3.2 is limited to the judgements of the 59 adult informants treated therein for all practical purposes as a homogeneous group. The sentences of the survey, which are all also reproduced in Appendix 1 with their various ratings (by number of individuals and by identifiable groups of significance for further studies) were deliberately varied semantically (as explained in Part 1) in hope to discern the particular features/dimensions which are central to the meanings of the terms under analysis. These features should be preserved even in their extended uses outside the domain of kinship. (Cf. Davidson’s (1978) interpretation that the core of the meanings of terms is what enables speakers to recognize them in their metaphorical (or extended) uses. Otherwise, the words would be basically unrecognizable as the same, and the uses hardly ever as ‘extended’ or ‘metaphorical’.) It was hoped that, all other formal grammatical aspects of the sentences being acceptable, variations of the average ratings of the informants in the individual sentences could be a reflection of the degree to which such core features/dimensions of the basic meanings of the items had been ‘abused’ in the non-prototypical or peripheral contexts of

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their uses. In other words, the ratings could be taken as a simple reflection of how happy the native speakers feel about the particular extension of the usage of the terms. This appeared to be a useful strategy since it is the denotational meanings of the terms which are being investigated here. Two of the working assumptions which were established from the start of the project and which were admittedly subject to being either confirmed or invalidated by the investigation are the following. (1) Even though father and mother are also used as verbs [see (5)], their nominal uses as in (6) are morpho-semantically more basic and are more common. 5 (5a) (b) (6a) (b)

Peter Mary Peter Mary

has fathered two children by Mary. has mothered two children by Peter. is the father of two children by Mary. is the mother of two children by Peter.

(2) Even though the items (both as basic and as derivative terms) are used in both the context of kinship, as above, and in others, as below in (7), the kinship uses are more typical of them; the others are simply extended from these typical uses. Thus, sentences (7) have some dose of metaphorical flavor in addition to their denotational contents. 6 (7a) Sigmund Freud was the father of modern psychology. (b) Susan B. Anthony was the mother of the feminist movement in America. (c) ‘Shall Error in the round of time still father Truth?’ (Taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, attributed to Tennyson, Love and Duty.) It was also survey involve the verbfather the nounfather

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assumed that the various instances of the extended uses included in the various degrees of derivation from the original kinship usage. For instance, in (7~) is further extended from the original meaning offather in (6a) than in (7a).

In accordance with Mufwene’s (1980) hypothesis that variation in the usage of lexical entries from prototypical to non-prototypical and peripheral uses applies to kinship terms, too, it was also assumed that the semantic analyses proposed in (3) for father and mother and repeated below for convenience, would be consonant with the general orientation of the investigation: (3a) father:ENGENDER (b) mothecENGENDER

and/or REAR (x y) and MALE x and/or REAR (x y) and FEMALE x

The issue of the semantic oppositeness of father to mother pending, such disjunctive definitions have the advantage of explicitly specifying the alternative core features/ dimensions which ought to be identified in all non-prototypical and/or extended uses of the terms under investigation. Assuming that the kinship terms father and mother apply prototypically to individuals who are both genitors and raisers, and nonprototypically (though not peripherally yet) to individuals who are either genitors only or raisers only (see Mufwene, 1980, pp. 31-2), it would, theoretically, then be possible to determine which of the two core features (or maybe complexes of features) have been felicitously or infelicitously extended in the various sentences of the survey. It was also hoped that this strategy would offer grounds for discerning whether the members of the disjunction

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in the core of the meanings of the terms were distributed with equal weight in both lexical items. 3.2. Analysis of the acceptability judgements 3.2.1. It may be useful to start this section with a noteworthy distinction which is suggested by the ratings of the sentences but was overlooked during the conception of the survey, owing partly to the general disregard for the distinction in the literature. This concerns the nominal usage of the items father and mother qua kinship terms. Given the ratings of sentences (8-13) below, it appears that a semantic distinction should be made between the relational uses of the terms as father of/mother of and their absolute/nonrelational uses as a father/a mother. Sentences (8 and 9) are considered by al! 59 adult informants and the transitional group as ‘completely normal’ (with an average score of 4). Only ten of the adult informants consider sentence (10) ‘completely normal’, and eleven informants (generally the same) consider sentence (11) ‘completely normal’. Only two adult informants rated sentences (12-13) as ‘completely normal’, and two others rated sentence (12) only or (13) only as ‘completely normal’. All four are a subset of the ten informants who rated sentence (IO) as ‘completely normal’. All the other adult informants considered sentences (10-13) less than normal. Their average scores are given below on the right of each sentence.7 Further details may be found in Appendix 1. (8) G’] Tom is the father of the two babies that died in the delivery room. (9) [k’] Jane is the mother of the two babies that died in the delivery room.

(10) [l’] Tom is a father even though his children have always died in the delivery room. (11) [m’] Jane is a mother even though her children have always died in the delivery room. (12) [n’] Jane is a mother even though she has always miscarried. (13) [o’] Tom is a father even though he has no children; his wife has always miscarried.

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With some anticipation of Part 4, these judgements are in general agreement with the answers to the questionnaire discussed therein. They generally suggest that the survival of a living child is a necessary condition for referring, non-relationally, to anybody as a father or a mother. 8 If the disjunctive definitions of the kinship terms father and mother proposed in (3) are assumed to be correct, it must also be inferred that different (complexes of) core features are foregrounded in sentences (8 and 9) on the one hand and sentences (10-13) on the other, with sentences (10 and 11) constituting a fluctuating interval for some speakers.9 GENITORSHIP seems to be a necessary and sufficient condition for the use of the items in (8 and 9). The foregrounding of this feature appears to be preserved in the various extensions of the relational terms in sentences (14-19), though the adult informants are generally happier with the extensions of father of than mother of in such cases. The extensions in (14-16) appear to bemore felicitous than those in (17-19). (14) [i] Sigmund Freud was the father of modern psychology. (15) [k] Susan B. Anthony was the mother of the feminist movement in

America. (16) [p] Martha Graham is the mother of modern dance.

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(17) [w] Tom is the father of that lie. (18) [x] Mary is the mother of that lie. (19) [y] Mary is the father of that lie.

Noteworthy about sentences (17-19) in particular is also how the judgements of the informants diverge from the Oxford English Dictionary (1933, p. 97), in which are listed under the third (biogenetic) interpretation of the nominal entry father, Biblical phrases such as The Father of Lights (God) and The Father of Lies (the Devil). On the other hand, GENITORSHIP does not seem to be a sufficient condition for the use of the kinship terms father and mother non-relationally in sentences (lo-13), except by a small proportion of adult informants. SOCIAL ROLE seems to be an important parameter of their uses in these sentences, and this role (presumably REARing) seems to be conditioned by the survival of the offspring in the case of these sentences. With another anticipation of Part 4, this is also confirmed by the answers to the questionnaire. It may be necessary to emphasize here that the SOCIAL ROLE/REARing aspect of the meanings of the kinship terms father and mother is not completely absent from their relational uses as father of/mother of. This point was already suggested in Mufwene (1980, p. 32) with sentences such as (20), though the relational/absolute distinction suggested here was not highlighted in that work: (20)

Tom has been a terrible/bad/good

father to Bill.

As for the survey, the ratings of sentences (21-24) attest to the significance of the REARing parameter in the meanings of the relational uses of these kinship terms, though to varying degrees (see below, next paragraph). The use of the possessive ‘s below, instead of the of prepositional phrase changes very little of the relational aspect of the terms. (21) [p’] Jane has been Fred’s mother and father for the last couple of years. (22) [q’] Peter has been Fred’s father and mother for the last couple of years. (23) [r’] Jane has been Fred’s father for the last couple of years. (24) [s’] Peter has been Fred’s mother for the last couple of years.

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Note in particular how these sentences highlight the significance of SEX features in the meanings of these terms as opposed to the inverse significances of the REARing parameter. Though the sentences with N’s father and mother and N’s mother and father are rated higher on the average than those in which the predictions contain only N’s father or N’s mother, it appears nevertheless that sex prototypes are stronger with father than with mother. However, interpreting this asymmetry only in terms of strength of prototypes may be oversimplifying the situation. Note, for instance, that while on a strictly biogenetic conception of the meanings the crossmatchings of SEX features in sentence (19) may have been expected to make the sentence worse than its counterpart (18), this does not actually happen. It appears indeed that GENITORship is more significantly/ centrally associated with father than with mother. Coversely, REARing may be associated more significantly with mother than with father. The other sentences of the survey will have their word on this below. 3.2.2. The verbal-denominal uses of father and mother deserve indeed a special section. Both in the basic kinship uses and in the extended (non-kinship) uses they highlight the

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significance of SEX features as well as the distribution of the putative (complexes of) core features ENGENDER and REAR. The asymmetry noted above in regard to the significance of these (complexes of) features in the meaning of the nouns father and mother is evident even in the derivative-denominal uses. Sentences (25-26) do not have parallel ratings even though no sex prototypes have been violated: (25) [z] Peter has fathered two children by Mary. (26) [a’] Mary has mothered two children by Peter.

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In particular, because the two sentences were given next to one another in the survey, few informants thought of interpreting mother here non-biogenetically, and its use was generally rejected as ‘odd’. However, among the seven males and three females who rated sentence (26) as ‘completely normal’, one pointed out specifically that, unlike the denominalfather, the verb mother had to be interpreted here as ‘care for NP as a mother’. This suggests that at least for those who were aware of this asymmetry, the derivations of these two verbs are based on different (complexes of) core features, presumably ENGENDER for father and REAR for mother. These patterns of derivation are fully supported by the sentences below: (27) [b’] (28) [d’] (29) [a] (30) [b] (3 1) [s]

Peter fathers other people’s children but not his own. Mary mothers other people’s children but not her own. Mary likes to mother all children. 10 Peter likes to father all children. Peter has decided to father two orphans (in addition to his own). (Intended REARing interpretation)

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Such sentences also point to a diachronic divergence from the use of father in (32), which is given in the Oxford English Dictionary (1933, p. 98) as a parallel denominal derivation to the use in (33): (32) ‘I would father no brats that were not of my own getting.’ (DeFoe, 1840, p. 213) (33a) ‘Cowards father cowards’, (Shakespeare, Cymbeline IV, ii, p. 26) (b) ‘Had I fathered him I had given him more of the rod than the sceptre.’ (Tennyson, Becket III, iii, p. 132) Sentences such as (34-35) below clearly show that the features MALE and FEMALE are undeniably parts of the meanings of the verbsfather and mother, respectively. (34) [c] Peter likes to mother his children. (35) [d] Mary likes to father her children.

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Sentence (34), in which the sex features of the referent (i.e., subject) and of the verb (in the predication) are mismatched, is obviously less acceptable than its prototypical counterpart (29). Likewise, sentence (35) is worse than the already-odd sentence (30), though the latter is certainly not its literal counterpart. However, it remains that ENGENDER does not seem to be a significant parameter in the particular use of the denominal mother in (34). Instead, REARing is a central parameter of its meaning here. This seems to be emphasized by its co-occurrence with his children, since one cannot ‘like’ to ENGENDER (as a HABIT) offsprings that one already has. As for sentence (35), it is likely that the co-occurrences

of father with her children,

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which (like that of mother with his children in (34)) calls especially for a social/REARing interpretation, overrules its normal biogenetic interpretation here. The combination of the sex prototype violation and the denotational misuse of the verb father here makes sentence (35) worse than sentence (30). However, see sentences (36-37) below, in which the biogenetic and social interpretations are opposed: (36) [n] Dr. Renee Richards fathered a boy before undergoing transsexual surgery. [41 (37) [o] Being unmarried now, Dr. Richards still has to father her son. [21 That is, if the context clearly suggests the biogenetic interpretation of father, which is the most appropriate of this verb, its acceptability rating is significantly increased. On the other hand, ceterisparibus, the acceptability rating drops if the context clearly calls for a social role/REARing interpretation. Note the syntactic difference between father A boy and father HER son in the two sentences. 11 The extended uses of the denominals father and mother outside the domain of kinship have been less felicitous than those of their nominal counterparts. Their uses in the following sentences have been rated ‘odd’, though the equality of the ratings may be partly due to the fact that not enough contexts were presented to suggest the interpretation of the verb mother as ‘care for NP as a mother’. This could have made a difference. At least one of the five adult informants who rated sentence (39) as ‘completely normal’ suggested the interpretation ‘care for NP as a mother’. (38) [h] (39) [l] (40) [q] (41) [t] (42) [u] (43) [v]

Sigmund Freud fathered modern psychology. Susan B. Anthony mothered the feminist movement in America. Martha Graham mothered modern dance. Tom fathered a lie in order to be released from his captors. Mary fathered a lie in order to be released from her captors. Mary mothered a lie in order to be released from her captors.

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3.2.3. A few significant observations have been made in Sections 3.2.1. and 3.2.2. which need to be paraphrased quite explicitly and more forcefully here before moving on to Part 4. Based on the sentences of the survey and, in addition, on the few sentences and phrases cited from the Oxford English Dictionary, parallel definitions of the kinship terms father and mother either in exclusive biogenetic terms or in exclusive social-role terms are rather inadequate. If such analyses were adopted we could not account without using brute force for some of the uses of the terms (though these need not be the same for each line of definitions). Strictly biogenetic definitions would not account adequately for sentences (lo-13), in particular. Such analyses would also make it difficult to account for the denominalderivation of mother. This is NOT associated with GENITORSHIP such as with the possible interpretation of (26), which was considered only by a few informants in the survey. See also sentences (28 and 29). In addition, any analyst relying solely on such definitions would be hard pressed to explain the acceptability of sentence (34) in spite of its slight oddity. On the other hand, exclusive social-role definitions could not provide adequate explanations for the acceptability of sentences (8 and 9) nor (14), a shortcoming which applies particularly to Mufwene (1977). Though such analyses could account for what goes on in sentences (21 and 22) and (24), they would fail to account for the oddity of sentence (23).

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And they would also be quite inadequate in accounting for the denominal derivations in sentences (25) and (36). Sentences (8-13) have suggested a useful distinction between the nominal uses of the terms as father of/mother of on the one hand and as a father/a mother on the other. However, considered more carefully, sentences (14-24) ail suggest that the distinction may not be as simple as originally conjectured, i.e., in exclusively biogenetic terms in the case of father of/mother of vs exclusively social-role terms in the case of a father/a mother. The conclusion may be true for the latter but not for the former. The lack of parallelism in the extended relational uses of the terms in sentences (14-19) show that some socialrole components must still play a significant role in the meaning of mother of in particular. The asymmetries in pairs (21 and 22) and (23 and 24) not only confirm this but also show, in addition, that the social-role features must be associated with the terms father and mother in unequal degrees of significance. In general it appears that social-role features play a more significant role in the meaning of mother of than father of. Conversely, the biogenetic features seem to play a more significant role in the meaning of father of than of mother ofi This is generally confirmed in the derivative uses. discussed in section 3.2.2. both in the strict context of kinship and in extended uses outside the domain of kinship, in particular through the asymmetry of sentences (42) and (43). Admitting that the uses of the terms outside the domain of kinship are unquestionably extended uses (which may account for the metaphorical flavor and for the infelicity of some of the constructions, in particular when sex specifications have been violated, as in (17 and 18) and (38-43)), there is then no need here to postulate different lexical entries for them. Also if foregrounding of features is an acceptable explanation of the different uses of these words (i.e., given different syntagmatic contexts, alternative and equal core features of the meanings of the words would be brought to the foreground), then it may not be really necessary to postulate different lexical entries for the uses of the terms as father of/mother of vs a father/a mother. Only the distinction between verbal and nominal entries appears to be recommended here. Much in sections 3.2.1. and 3.2.2. suggests that under the above assumptions the best definitions for father and mother should be disjunctive, as in (3). This allows for alternative applications of ‘foregrounding’, a principle which could be claimed to be in effect even in the denominal derivative uses. However, such a simplistic definition would inadequately suggest at the very least that the nouns father and mother are mere bipolar opposites in the semantic dimension of SEX and have parallel definitions. More than one sentence above (with the items in either nominal or denominal uses) suggest that this position is untenable, even if there is indeed significant evidence for admitting that both (complexes of) features ENGENDER and REAR are present in the meanings of the kinship nouns. The derivative denominals point to a different conclusion. They are even used in ways which suggest that they have little left in common. The verb father may be defined as ENGENDER (x y) and MALE x, whereas the verb mother should be defined as REAR (xy) and FEMALE x. Since the fact that the denominal verbs have derived from the nouns can hardly be contested here, the best strategy is perhaps simply to introduce a system of weighting of features in the analysis of the nouns and to assign to the (complexes of) features ENGENDER and REAR uneven weights or degrees of significance. This should indicate

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between the kinship terms father and mother more subtle differences than just by the features MALE vs FEMALE, respectively. By positing + for ‘more significant’ and - for ‘less significant’, definitions (3) may be improved as below in (3’): (3’a) father: ENGENDER + and/or REAR- (xu) and MALE x mother: ENGENDER- and/or REAR + (xu) and FEMALE x Such definitions would account for (1) the asymmetry in the denominal-verbal derivations from the nounsfather and mother, (2) for the relative felicity or infelicity of crossmatching of SEX features in sentences (21-24), and (3) for the appropriateness of the extended uses of the nouns in sentences (14-19). The same working assumption holds here as at the beginning of the paper, viz., the same core features (now, the same more significant features) are preserved through the extended and derivative uses of the terms. But the informants should be allowed here to have their say on this suggested interpretation of the meanings of the kinship termsfother and mother through their answers to the questionnaire. This follows immediately below. 4. Informants’ responses to questions 4.1. Text of the questionnaire Below is the text of the questionnaire which was circulated to the seventy participants in the survey. The figures which are given to the left of each suggested answer must be interpreted out of a total of 58 adult informants. The responses of the 59th informant disappeared somehow before this second part of the survey was finally processed. Those of the transitional group and of the teenage informants may be found in Appendix 2. They have not been considered for the analysis given in section 4.2, since their inclusion would distort the consistency of the analysis. In order to restrain the number of relevant factors in answering the questions an artifact was introduced by which the informants were asked to assume only a situation in which the man has sired only once and the woman has conceived only once. All answers have been given relative to this particular situation. Questionnaire (1) When is a man qualified to be a father? (Check one of the following:) 8(a) 30(b) 12(c) 8(d)

after he has made a woman pregnant after a woman has given birth to a child sired by him if he has raised a child sired by him other: 4 raised a child; and 4 disjunctive answers of the form ‘b or c or raised a child’

(2) If your answer to question (1) is (a), can the person still be considered a father even if the woman he made pregnant has miscarried or aborted? 1 Yes/6 No 1 abstention. One of the 6 ‘no’ added: except in answer to the question Who W(ISthe father of NP? Cf. Section 3.2.1. (3) If your answer to question (1) is (b), can the person still be considered a father if the child died at birth or soon after birth? 13 Yes/l5 No

2 abstentions

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Note: the twelve B-answers include 6 inconsistent Yes-B, which reduces the number of true Yes to 18 (or actually 16) and increases the number of true No to 10. For these ten informants it appears that physical interaction with the child is an additional necessary condition for being a mother. (9) If your answer to question (6) is (c), in which of the following ways would you talk about the woman if her child died before 5 years of age? 1(A) she is a mother 3(B) she was a What if the child died between 6 and 15 years 1(A) she is a mother 3(B) she was a What if the child died after 15 years of age? 3(B) she was a 1(A) she is a mother 6 abstentions in all cases

mother of age? mother mother

(10) According to you what makes a woman a mother? 37 13 1 7

GENITORship and/or REARing (including four 6a) GENITORship alone (including one 6d) PREGNANCY abstentions

(11) When can you say that a man has been a mother to a child? 5(A)

If the child’s mother has died or gone away and the man has been raising the child alone. l(B) If the child’s mother has been negligent and the father had to assume the mother’s responsibilities too. 4 AandB O(C) If the child’s mother has been working full time outside their home and the man had to take care of the child alone. 40(D) In all the above cases. (Including six 6a respondents) 7(E) In none of the above cases. (Including one la respondent, three 6b respondents, and three 6c respondents) l(F) Other: ‘fulfilling functions traditionally associated with a mother’ (12) When can you say of woman that she has been a father to a child? 5(A) 5(B) 15 O(C) 22(D) 1l(E) O(F)

If the child’s father has died or gone away and the woman has been raising the child alone. If the child’s father has been negligent and the mother had to assume the father’s responsibilities too. A and B (including two la respondents) If the child’s father has been working full time outside their home and the woman had to take care of the child alone. In all of the above cases. (Including two la respondents) In none of the above cases. (Including one la respondent) Other.

Note: Concerning questions 11 and 12, eight informants accept one case or another of mismatchings for mother but not for father. Eleven informants answered 11D but 12A&B, one answered 1IE but 12D, and one answered 11A but 12D.

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4.2. Analysis of the answers to the questionnaire This questionnaire contains a few shortcomings and may not be ideal for the kind of investigation it was intended for. For instance, it may be too harshly criticized for suggesting answers which are not clearcut for questions (1) and (6). Also these questions fail to explicitly suggest disjunctive answers of the kind given by some informants in options (Id) and (6d). In particular the alternative ‘if he has raised a child sired or adopted by him’ is not given. In addition, question (8) is pursued in more subtle distinctions than question (3). This lack of parallelism in the conception of the questionnaire sheds relatively limited light on the factors which govern the use of father and leaves limited ground for deriving comparative conclusions. I cannot offer any good excuse for the oversight which calls for the latter criticism. However, the former criticism remains absolutely relevant only if questions (1) and (6) are unnecessarily considered independently. To start with, note that options (Id) and (6d) left to the informants the alternative of proposing in their own words answers which they thought were more adequate. Some did do so. Indeed, from the beginning of the survey they were exhorted to comment further on the sentences or questions if they found this necessary. In addition, questions (2-4) and (7-9) supply the necessary information for assessing the relevant parameters for re-interpreting the figures of questions (1) and (6). This is done below, though I will not discuss these questions right away. Questions (5) and (10) are an adequate starting point for analysing the questionnaire with regard also to the findings in section 3. The figures of both questions confirm that the disjunctive definitions of the terms father and mother, involving ‘ENGENDER and/or REAR’, are predominant among the informants, though there are some who would still define them in strict biogenetic terms. The figures of these questions do not, however, in themselves confirm the proposal in section 3 to weight the (complexes of) features ENGENDER and REAR asymmetrically in the meanings of father and mother. However, the figures of questions (11) and (12) do confirm that the suggested semantic asymmetry with regard to the significance of ENGENDER and REAR is justifiable, at least as a historical tendency. Forty of 58 informants are willing (independently of linguistic context) to predicate motherhood of a man without restrictions, as opposed to 22 of 58 informants who would likewise predicate fatherhood of a woman. Also 7 of 58 informants would never predicate motherhood of a man, against 11 of 58 informants who would never predicate fatherhood of a woman. In addition, eight informants have been identified who would predicate motherhood of a man but never fatherhood of a woman. Twelve informants would predicate motherhood of a man without any restrictions but would predicate fatherhood of a woman only under conditions (12A) and/or (12B). Only one informant answered (1 lE).but (12D), and one other answered (11A) but (12D). These two answered questions (1) and (6) with options (la) and (6b), respectively. It appears that although the weighted analyses proposed in section 3 for the meanings of father and mother do not apply to all speakers of English, they do apply to a good proportion of speakers. This fact can at least explain why the derivative-denominal verbs father and mother are assigned unparallel meanings today and may not be interpreted as semantic opposites. Taken alone, questions (1) and (6) are not really informative about the conditions of usage of the terms father and mother, about the actual need for linguistic-semantic definitions which are disjunctive and socio-biogenetically oriented, and about the

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weighting of the putative (complexes of) features ENGENDER and REAR. Questions (2-4) and (7-9) highlight significant parameters which have generally been overlooked in the literature and which, according to the survey, may not be remembered by informants when responses are elicited to simplistic questions such as (1) and (6), and (5) and (10). Thus questions (2) and (7) show that even for people who claim that impregnation or pregnancy are necessary conditions for anybody to be called father or mother, these conditions are not sufficient. For the majority of informants the pregnancy must come to term with delivery of a live baby. Questions (3) and (8) show that, in addition, it is necessary for the child to continue to live after birth. Of the 30 informants who said that the birth of the child is a necessary condition for the recognition of the begetter as a father, only 12 thought that he may continue to be called a father even if the child does not survive birth. Fifteen informants said instead that he would no longer be qualified to be called a father if the child did not survive. (Two of the informants abstained). Mutatis mutandis, only 15 of the 31 informants who said that the birth of the child is the necessary condition for anybody to be called a mother said that the genetrix may continue to be called a mother even if the child died after birth or at delivery. Sixteen said instead that she could not. Note in addition that 24 of the 31 informants said that the genetrix remains a mother even if she has given the child up for adoption. Survival of birth by the child is actually a necessary condition for most speakers. However, in spite of all the above statistics, note that the use of the terms father or mother in reference to genitors and genetrixes whose offspring have either died or been given up for adoption is often modified by a past tense inflection of the copula. In spite of the lack of parallelism in the conception of the survey (in regard to questions (3) and (8) in particular), question (8) actually turns out to be informative in this respect. A greater proportion than may have been predicted (at least 16 of the 26 informants who knew what to say if the offspring did not survive birth) responded that they would say ‘she was a mother’. Among such respondents are eight informants who had answered the preceding questions with ‘Yes, the woman remains a mother even after the death of her child’. The firm number of informants who believe she can still be described with the sentence ‘she is a mother’ is thus reduced to only 5 out of 26 informants. Likewise, the use of the past tense also reduces the proportion of the informants who would predicate concomitant motherhood of a genetrix who has given her child up for adoption to only 16-18 out of the 31 informants. This suggests that for these informants the survival of the offspring is not sufficient: further physical interaction between the genetrix and the offspring is also necessary for the genetrix to be considered a mother. Given the general distribution of response figures for question (8) in particular, it cannot of course be denied that there are certainly people who conceive of kinship in strictly or predominantly biogenetic terms. Such figures may be partially correlated with the ratio of low ratings for, e.g., sentences (23-24) [i.e., r’-s’ in Appendix 11, which diverge from the prototypical cases by the cross-matchings of SEX features between the predications and the referents. However, note that the 16-18 of the 31 informants, plus the 1 of 7 informants for question (7) and the 1 of 10 informants for question (9), represent 20 out of .58 informants. Even if the 6 abstentions for question (9) and the 1 abstention for question (7) are counted off the remaining 38 informants, it may still be safely inferred that many Americans consider REARing an important parameter of the

meaning and use of the kinship term mother, 12Hence the analysis of at least this word in terms of the disjunction ENGENDER and/or REAR in order to account for the attested variation in its use both within and outside the domain of kinship seems to be recommended. Though the reasons are not exactly the same as those why this analysis was proposed in section 3, this constitutes an additional justification for supporting the analysis on a pan-lectal or cross-idio~ect~ level. Those readers who go through the figures of the acceptability judgements in the appendix will notice that, indeed, Americans vary significantly in their conceptions and usages of the terms@her and mother, The figures of questions (g) (and to a certain extent those of questions (4) and (9)) also ~~~h~ght another aspect of the usage of the items ~~~~~~and mot&~. The correlation of Yes- and B-answers (with wasf appears to confirm the need for distinguishing between father of/mother of and a father/a mother, as pointed out in section 3.2.1. Two inform~ts also added expficit comments to this effect. It is quite possible that, for instance, some of the sixteen informants who said that “a genetrix is still a mother even if she has given her child up for adoption” may have intended this under the conception mother of. The same applies to the five informants who replied that ‘a genetrix is still a mother even after her child has died’. And the same may apply, ~~~a~~ ~~~~~~~~ to the figures of question (3). That much may be learned from. the questionnaire as it was conceived and used. Different formats may be needed to highlight other semantic and pragmatic aspects and provide figures which are useabfe for more explicit consideration of the actual distinction of the (complexes of) features. However, overah, the thesis defended in section 3 has not been invalidated. Instead, it has rather been confirmed in a few respects, in particular, in regard to di~j~n~ive analyses with ‘ENGENDER and/or REAR’ and in regard to the need for weighting these predicates as~rnet~c~~y in the meanings offgther and moGrer. 5. Some coaclusions

According to the above analysis of the survey, Gruber’s 41973) hypothesis that the meaning of the verb #Q# may be correlated with that of the kinship term father seems generally to be correct, As seen through the acceptability judgements on the sentences in Section 3, biogenesis is undoubtedly quite a significant component of the meaning of the nominal use of Jagher in the domain of kinship and seems to constitute its predomi~~t core parameter for some speakers. It survives as the exclusive core component in all the extended and derivative-verbal uses of the term. (See Appendix 1 for the dj~tributio~ of the figures). However, the analysis of the qu~tion~aire also reveals that in the basic domain of kinship bi~~en~is/~~~IT~Rship involves more than impregnation of a woman. Cf, Wierzbicka’s (1980) definition offather. For most speakers it also involves the survival of the child. It is in this sense that, presumably, “begetting” (at least as part of the analysis of father) has to be understood. I conjecture that this additional prerequisite for the use of father is perhaps responsible for the ensuing signific~~e of the REARing parameter of its meaning in some contexts, in particular when it is used non-relationally as afhther. On the other hand, Cruber’s correlation of the meaning of the verb BEAR with that of the kinship term moti”te‘s,a correiation which is obviously bioge~~tica~ly based, has found less support in the survey responses. As far fufher, the analysis shows that even in ideal cases in which engendering an offspring appears to be a prerequisite, motherhood just

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involves more than conceiving and bearing a child. Thus the durative/stative aspect of the meanings of the noun and verb mother, as well as the fact that they are prototypically predicated of females, are about all that is correct in Gruber’s correlation. The analysis shows that for many speakers (if not for most of them) REARing constitutes an important component of the meaning of the noun mother in any of its uses. This component becomes the exclusive core of the meaning of its derivative verb. The extended uses of the term are less felicitous and ‘background’ the biogenetic parameter in most cases. This analysis also shows no significant evidence for supporting Wierzbicka’s correlation between the concept of mother and that of ‘giving birth’. However, it does confirm her thesis that the kinship terms father and mother differ in more complex and subtle ways than in their prototypical and peripheral features MALE vs FEMALE, respectively. The answers to questions (11) and (12) confirm the acceptability judgements on sentences (21-24) and (34-35) in particular. For both the reasons discussed in Section 3 and that of inter-idiolectal variation invoked in Section 4, analyzing the meanings of the nouns father and mother as proposed in (3’) seems to be the best generalization. If the acceptability judgements discussed in Section 3 should stand for what is referred to as ‘observed behavior’ in cultural anthropology, then it may also be safely concluded here that for most speakers the meanings of the nouns father and mother should be analyzed as in (3’). Those of the verbs may certainly be analyzed as ENGENDER (..YJJ) and MALE x and REAR (x u) and FEMALE x respectively, keeping in mind that MALE and FEMALE are as peripheral in the meanings of the verbs as of the nouns. Whether the above formulae are adequate or not, it is obvious that in either their nominal or verbal uses father and mother in (American) English are not bipolar semantic opposites. Their meanings appear to differ from one another in ways similar to those of, e.g., chair vs stool or table vs desk in the sense that (even though they denote related pieces of furniture in each pair) they differ in respects which are more discrete and subtle than peripheral. My conjecture at this point is that SEX distinction may be an opposition which has been superimposed on the meanings of father and mother, based particularly on human biological means and strategies for procreation. This should explain why they have a peripheral status in the meanings of the items investigated here. The classic relationship between father and mother, on the one hand, and parent, on the other, cannot be denied here, though this is not acknowledged quite in the way proposed by Gruber or suggested by definitions such as Kay’s in (2). The term parent should certainly be analyzed in a way which accounts adquately for the alternative foregrounding of ENGENDER and REAR in the following uses: (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50)

His parents are alive/dead. [ENGENDER] [REAR] They have good/terrible parents. Parenting workshop. [REAR] [ENGENDER] Parent language; parent company; parent institution. [REAR] They’ve been parenting her sister’s children. ?They parented two children before they died. [REAR + , ?ENGENDER-] ?The new central headquarters will parent all regional headquarters from now on. [REAR, extended]

Given the basic ways in which the (complexes of) features ENGENDER and REAR have been shown to differ in regard to their significance in the meanings of the nouns

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father and mother, it also seems that the meanings of parent as a verb or as a noun cannot be related to those of father and mother in the way suggested by either Gruber or Kay’s analysis in (2). The meaning ofparent as a verb IS based exclusively on REAR and is closer to that of the verb mother than the verb father. The meaning of its nominal counterpart (defined correctly and generally in conventional dictionaries as ‘father or mother’) corresponds more to their set theoretical intersection (which would thus include only the common components of their meanings). According to the findings in this paper, such common core features must be hard to produce if in particular the weighting convention is adopted. A formulaic representation along the line of (51) rather than (52) seems to present a more adequate analysis of the noun parent. (5 1) (ENGENDER + and/or REAR- (x y) and MALE (?c)or (ENGENDERREAR + (xy) and FEMALE (x) (52) (ENGENDER and/or REAR (x y) The verb parent may be analyzed as in: (53) REAR (xy).

and/or

Acknowledgemenrs-An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Twenty-Sixth Southeast Conference on Linguistics at the University of Florida, Gainesville, 26-27 March, 1982. I am particularly grateful to Professor James D. McCawley for adising me during the conception of the survey which has resulted in the paper and to Professor Ben G. Blount for his thorough criticism of the version presented at Gainesville. I am equally indebted to all the participants in this survey. All the shortcomings are my responsibility.

NOTES ’ My use of the phrase ‘elusive meaning’ here is more consistent with Mufwene (1979) than it is in agreement (though not in conflict) with Aronoff (1981). The latter considers the ‘elusiveness of meaning’ essentially in terms of diachronic development and inter-idiolectal variation. I have used the phrase basically in the sense that the meanings of most lexical items are just not that easy to define comprehensively and exhaustively even if the analyst is dealing with one idiolect at one particular point in time. For me, the addition of the dimension of variation just increases the elusiveness of meaning but does not change the basic nature of the problem. Basically, so many aspects of the meanings of lexical items are highlighted only in the particular contexts of their uses and are overlooked in other contexts. Often enough the analyst may not be so sure of having considered ail such relevant contexts. Hence, as concluded in Mufwene (1979), it is often more realistic to discuss ‘aspects of meanings’ rather than ‘the meanings’ of lexical items as realities we could provide full definitions of. Though there is a lot in this paper which supports the more complex view of the elusiveness of meaning brought about by the additional dimension of variation, the discussions below assume primarily my original definition of this concept. ’ This position does not apply to all cultural anthropologists. Indeed, there has been theoretical disagreement among them. ‘Extensionists’ such as J. D. Unwin, F. G. Lounsbury, W. H. Goodenough and H. W. Scheffler claim that the meanings of kinship terms may be equated with the biogenetic specifications associated with the terms in their analyses. On the other hand, ‘behavioral theorists’ such as Radcliffe-Brown, R. Needham, E. R. Leach and D. M. Schneider claim that biogenetic specifications merely specify conditions of reference but the meanings are actually or also involve the norms of conduct associated with the terms. See, for instance, Buchler and Selby (1968), for a more detailed and explicit description of the theoretical disagreement among cultural anthropologists in this respect. ’ Truly examples (2) illustrate only the presentation of these kinship terms as semantic opposites, since it could well be argued that PARENT need not be interpreted biogenetically. It may indeed be interpreted along the line of the disjunctive definitions given in (3). See also Mufwene (1980) and Section 5 of this paper. 4 The discord between Gruber and Wierzbicka is not absolute. Like Gruber, Wierzbicka defines woman as ‘a human being of the kind that can be thought of as a potential mother’ (as opposed to man: ‘a human being of the kind that can be thought of as a potential begetter’). Considered carefully, Wierzbicka’s definitions in (4) have more in common with Gruber’s position than it first appears. In particular, Wierzbicka’s definition of mofher also relies significantly on the concept of bearing introduced by Gruber.

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’ This position hardly needs any justification. All dictionaries consulted during this investigation, including Webster’s Third, American Heritage Dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford American Dictionary define the verbal uses of the items in terms of the nouns or of adjectives derived from the nouns. No instance has been attested where the noun is defined in terms of the verb. Considering that the nominal and verbal uses share a lot of their meanings (though there are some significant differences to be discussed in the text), they will for all practical purposes be treated as homonyms in this paper. 6 A serious problem of semantic analysis seems to arise here from this seemingly too-permissive and allinclusive consideration of the lexical items father and mother, viz., in particular, whether they mean the same thing in all such uses. The answer is obviously ‘no’. However, so far there are about three things to my knowiedge that an investigator in this area could be sure of: (1) the terms are interpreted slightly differently in the different uses (which is normal, given the form of the meanings of the kinship terms from which all other uses are putatively derived or extended). (2) Linguistically speaking, the verbal and nominal uses of the items correspond certainly to two different lexical entries for each item. This accounts for the differences in syntactic properties (quite systematic in fact) between the two kinds of uses. However, (3) it is not proven yet that the other, intracategorial, variations among the different nominal uses in particular also correspond to differences in the contents of entries nor how they do, if this is the case. This is the kind of phenomenon this investigation is purported to reveal. Hence, it would have been ill-advised to be so selective from the start and to isolate, a priori, some uses as being more appropriate. Given the working assumption that al1 uses other than kinship nominal uses are derived or extended for these and that the most significant core features/dimensions of meanings are preserved through all such derivative/extended uses, it was assumed that all uses of the lexical itemsfather and mother, would be relevant for the investigation. It is to be deplored that ‘performance’ factors did not allow the investigation to be more exhaustive in regard to types of contexts of use. ’ Each sentence which is cited from the survey will from now on be assigned two reference codes. The Roman figure is for reference to the text and the letter in square brackets is for reference to Appendix 1. The sentences are ordered in the appendix in the exact order in which they were given in the survey so as to leave the very spirit of the investigation criticizable for its worth for the benefit of interested researchers. * It is quite possible that whatever may be learned in addition from the questionnaire is to some extent determined by the particular way in which the questions were formulated, using the key-terms ‘non-relationally’. However, as will be discussed in Section 4, the answers were suggestive enough in this regard not to cancel the biogenetic component of their meanings out and to keep the questionnaire equally relevant for the uses of father of and mother of too. 9 The principle of ‘foregrounding of features’ in a lexical entry is not restricted to kinship terminology. It was pointed out in Mufwene (1979, pp. 168, 198-203) that verbs such as urge, order and request are subject to the same principle in alternative constructions such as in (1) and (2) below: (1) Kelly requested/urged/ordered (2) Kelly requested/urged/ordered

that Cindy leave her apartment. Cindy to leave her apartment.

Constructions such as (2), with the infinitive, emphasize the CAUSational-manipulative aspect of the meanings of the verbs and the fact that the subject of the matrix verb acted directly on its object. On the other hand, constructions such as (l), with the subjunctive, ‘foreground’ the INTENT aspect of their meanings and suggest no direct action of the subject of the matrix verb on the object. A similar distribution of syntactic features correlated with foregrounding differences in the interpretation of verbs applies to those factive verbs which are also verbs of emotion. See: (3) It bothers me/I regret that John has hallucinations. (4) It bothers me/I regret for John to have hallucinations. The embedded infinitive construction emphasizes/foregrounds the subjective-emotive aspect of the meanings of the matrix verbs, while the indicative construction foregrounds the fact that the embedded sentence is to be interpreted factively. The presuppositions associated with the different sentences vary in accordance with the factive vs. emotive interpretations of the verbs. See also Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971). lo There are more sentences with the denominals father and mother in Appendix 1 than may be discussed here. Noteworthy about them is the fact that, even though sentences (e’-f’) and to a certain extent sentence (e) are still rated higher than their counterparts (g’) and (f) with father, if REARing is clearly the intended meaning, they are still rated lower than their counterparts in which we// is not used. Some informants have observed that mothering is not the kind of thing one does well or poorly. One simply mothers or does not. The variation of ratings with regard to the denominal mother should then be seen here primarily as a reflection of the presence of well in these sentences. ” The same differences in the significance of the (complexes of) semantic features ENGENDER and REAR also emerges from the following sentences submitted to some native speakers of American English while this paper was being written:

(I ) Peter likes to mother children. (2) Mary likes to father children.

[31 [ll

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(3) Peter has always mothered children. (4) Mary has always fathered children. (5) I am sure that if Mary were a man she would have fathered several children by now.

131 111 [41

Sentences (1) and (3) in particular are necessarily assigned REARing interpretations and are rated ‘slightly odd’ mainly because of the mismatching of sex features between the referent and the predication. On the other hand, sentences (2) and (4) cannot be assigned a parallel interpretation and are rejected. However, sentence (5) seems to provide enough context for a felicitous use of the verb father with an unmarked biogenetic/ENGENDER interpretation. Whether these sentences as well as (35) in the main text illustrate how much more strongly the sex prototype is associated withfather than with mother is a question to which I can offer no firm answer. But if indeed the verbsfather and mother are opposed to one another by more than the features MALE vs FEMALE, then the physiological means of human procreation would prevent a female from fathering while nothing really prevents a male from mothering. ‘* There may appear to be a contradiction here between the figures of the answers to question (7-9) and those of the answers to question (IO). There is actually no conflict since the figures discussed here concern the significance of the parameter of REARing for some informants. In question (10) the figures regard the distribution of the complex of features ENGENDER and/or REAR vs ENGENDER vs PREGNANCY.

REFERENCES MORRIS, W. (Ed.) 1969 American HeritageDictionary. American Heritage, New York. ARONOFF, M. 1981 Automobile semantics. Linguistic Inquiry 12.32947. BUCHLER, I. R. and SELBY, H. A. 1968 Kinship and Social Organization: An Introduction to Theory and Merhod. Macmillan, New York. DAVIDSON, D. 1978 What’metaphors mean. Critical Inquiry $3147. GOODENOUGH, W. H. 1965 Yankee kinship terminology: a problem in componential analysis. In Hammel, E. A. (Ed.), Formal SemanticAnalysis, pp. 259-87. American Anthropologist, Vol. 67, No. 5, Part 2. GOODENOUGH, Press, Cambridge.

W. H. 1970 Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthroplogy.

Cambridge University

GRUBER, J. S. 1973 Hoan kinship terms. Linguistic Inquiry 4,42749. KAY, P. 1974 On the form of dictionary entries: English kinship semantics. In Shuy, R. W. and Bailey, C.-J. N. (Eds), Toward Tomorrows Linguistics, pp. 120-38. Georgetown University Press, Washington DC. KIPARSKY, C. and KIPARSKY, P. 1971 Fact. In Steinberg, D. D. and Jakobovits, L. A. (Ed.), Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, pp. 345-69. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. MUFWENE, S. S. 1977.. . Which one was the father of Jesus Christ? In Beach, W. A. et al. (Eds), Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 439-58. Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago. MUFWENE, S. S. 1979 ‘Semantic field’ vs ‘semantic class’, Ph. dissertation, University of Chicago. MUFWENE, S. S. 1980 ‘Prototype’ and ‘kin-class’. Anthropological Linguistics 22,294l. EHRLICH, E. et al. (Eds) 1980 Oxford American Dictionary. Oxford University Press, New York. MURRAY, J. A. H. et al. (Eds) 1933 Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, Oxford. GOVE, P. (Ed.) 1961 Websters Third. The Lakeside Press, Chicago. WIERZBICKA, A. 1980 Lingua Mentalis: the Semantics of Natural Language. Academic Press, Sydney.

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Appendix 1 The tables on pp. 267-269 give the complete figures of the acceptability judgements of the informants on all the sentences of the survey. In order to make the tables less crowded, the figures of the average ratings have generally been rounded. E.g., 3.7 has been rounded to 4 for sentence (a) as of the judgements of the adult males. Finer distinctions are indicated, though, for the larger groupings discussed in the text and labeled ‘Total average’ in the tables. E.g., 3 + corresponds to any figure between 3.2 and 3.4, 4- corresponds to any figure between 3.5 and 3.7, while a rounded 3 varies from 2.8 to 3.1. These total averages have been calculated by adding up all the individual ratings and dividing the total by the number of the informants who rated the particular sentence. Since most of these sentences have already been re-ordered according to their relevance for the theoretical issues discussed in the text, they are given here in the exact order in which they were given to the informants. The scale of ratings remains: 4: ‘completely normal’; 3: ‘slightly odd’; 2: ‘quite odd, although such sentences are probably heard now and then’; 1: ‘no native speaker of (American) English would ever use the word that way’.

Appendix 2 The following are the figures of the responses of the teenage and transitional groups to the questionnaire. The size of this part of the survey is unfortunately not big enough for a useful comparison with the responses of the adult informants. The figures are nevertheless given here for whatever is worthwhile considering in them, in particular from a developmental point of view and in relation to the figures in Appendix 1. The initials TG and TN stand for ‘transitional group’ and ‘teenagers’, respectively, next to the figures.

Questionnaire (1) When is a man ITN ITG 4TN 2TG ITN 2TN

qualified to be called a father? (Check one of the following) (a) after he has made a woman pregnant (b) after a woman has given birth to a child sired by him (c) if he has raised a child sired by him _ (d) other: has a living child

(2) If your answer to question (1) is (a), can the person still be considered a father even if the woman he made pregnant has miscarried or aborted? ITN

Yes

(3) If your answer to question (1) is (b), can the person still be considered a father if the child died at birth or soon after birth? 1TG and 3TN No ITN Yes (4) If your answer to question (1) is (c), suppose the child died between 1 and 5 years of age, which of the following descriptions would be most appropriate about the man? 1TG and 1TN (B) he was a father (A) he is a father What if the child died between 6 and 15 years of age? 1TG and 1TN (B) he was a father (A) he is a father What if the child died after 15 years of age? 1TG and 1TN (B) he was a father (A) he is a father 1TG and 1TN omissions (5) According to you, what makes a man a father? 1TG and 1TN IMPREGNATION 1TN GENITORSHIP 2TG and 5TN REARING 1TN OMISSION (6) When is a woman qualified to be called a mother? (a) from the first time she is pregnant 1TG and 3TN (b) from the first time she has given birth to a child [This includes the respondents of 1 (a)] 2TG and 4TN (c) from the first time she has raised a child (by her) 1TN (d) other: omission (7) If your answer to question (6) is (a), would you still call the same person a mother if she miscarried or had an abortion? Yes No If your answer is No, can you say why not?

266

SALIKOKO

S. MUFWENE

(8) If your answer to question (6) is (b), would you still call the same person a mother if the child died at birth or soon after birth? ITG and 2TN No 1TN Yes Would you comment on her in any of the following ways? 1TN (A) she is a mother (consistent with previous answer) 2TN (B) she was a mother (consistent with previous answer) 1TG Neither Would you still consider her a mother if she gave the baby up for adoption? 1TG and 3TN Yes Would you say any of the following about her? 2TN (A) she is a mother ITN (B) she was a mother [this is a respondent of No to first question of @)I (9) If your answer to question (6) is (c), in which of the following ways would you talk about the woman if her child died before 5 years of age? 1TN (A) she is a mother 1TG and 1TN (B) she was a mother What if the child died between 6 and 15 years of age? ITN (A) she is a mother 1TG and 1TN (B) she was a mother What if the child died after 15 years of age? 1TN (A) she is a mother 1TG and 1TN (B) she was a mother 2TG and 2TN omissions (10) According to you, what makes a woman a mother? ITG and 2TN GENITORSHIP 2TG and 4TN REARING 2TN omissions (11) When can you say that a man has been a mother to a child? 1TN (A) if the child’s mother has died or gone away and the man has been raising the child alone. (B) If the child’s mother has been negligent and the father had to assume the mother’s responsibilities too. (C) If the child’s mother has been working full time outside their home and the man had to take care of the child alone. 3TG and 6TN (D) In all the above cases. 1TN (E) In none of the above cases. (12) When can you say of a woman that she has been a father to a child? 2TN (A) If the child’s father has died or gone away and the woman has been raising the child alone. [One of these is the respondent of (1 IA)] (B) If the child’s father has been negligent and the mother had to assume the father’s responsibilities too. (C) If the child’s father has been working full time outside their home and the woman had to take care of the child alone. 3TG and 5TN (D) In all the above cases. ITN (E) In none of the above cases. [same respondent of (1 IE)]

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Mary likes to mother all children. Peter likes to father all children. Peter likes to mother his children. Mary likes to father her children. Mary likes to mother her children, and she does it well too. Peter likes lo father his children, and he does it well too. G. Washington was a father of the U.S.; so was 9. Franklin. G. Washington fathered the U.S.; so did 9. Franklin. Sigmund Freud was the falher of modern psychology. Sigmund Freud fathered modern psychology. Susan 9. Anthony was the mother of feminist movement in America. Susan 9. Anthony mothered the feminist movement in America. Susan B. Anthony fathered the feminist movement in America. Dr. Renee Richards fathered a boy before undergoing transsexual surgery. Being unmarried now, Dr. R. Richards still has to father her son. Martha Graham is the mother of modern dance.

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