Date:  Fri, 28 Jul 1995 15:19:29 CST

From:  salikoko mufwene <mufw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>

Subject: Re: Your Momma -- Sexual Connotation?



In Message Fri, 28 Jul 1995 14:55:25 -0400,

 "M. Lynne Murphy" <104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA> writes:



>it's a world-wide thing--usu. reference to knowledge of someone's

>mother implicates that the insulter has had sex with the other's

>mother. two examples i can think of offhand: in beng (a west

>african language) one insult is "your mother has a pendulous rectum."

>in japanese, it's "your mother's belly button is an outie." just

>saying "your mother" derives from such things, though most modern

>users might not realize it. the japanese example, i'm told, is

>widely used by kids who don't understand the implication.



  I will dispute this universal. It does not work this way in the Bantu

languages that I speak. To my knowledge, the counterpart of "your mother"

(as an insult) in Kituba, Lingala, and Kiyansi suggests reference to

genitals but says nothing about about having sex with the relative, NOT AT

ALL. The insult in the phrase may stem from the fact that names of genitals

are often taboos, but I won't even speculate on this. The most direct

interpretation of the insult is that there is something bad about your

mother that the speaker would like to say but won't. But then the phrase is

often used by people who know nothing at all about one's mother. The range

of possible interpretations is quite wide. One thing I found particularly

interesting in a study of Gregersen's of the early 1980's (or maybe earlier)

is that it highlights a crosscultural bias against female relatives.

Sali.

***********************************************************************

Salikoko S. Mufwene

University of Chicago

Dept. of Linguistics

1010 East 59th Street

Chicago, IL 60637

s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu

312-702-8531; fax: 312-702-9861