Nursery words and hypocorisms among Germanic kinship terms

Abstract

By using Jakobson’s (1960: 127–130) criteria for determining the nursery-word status of a given lexeme, I argue in this article that, even if we should no longer regard PG *aiþīn-/-ōn-‘mother’ (Goth.aiþei), *aiþma-‘daughter’s husband’ and *faþōn-‘father’s sister’ as nursery words or hypocorisms (Hansen 2017: 207–220), we should certainly still do so for PG *ammōn-‘parent’s mother; wet nurse’, *attan-‘father’ (Goth.atta), *basōn-‘father’s sister’ and *mōnōn-/mōmōn-‘mother; mother’s sister’.