mother grandmother 5 realizations
ACCEPTED Realization 1
type Polysemy
language Brahui
lexeme ammā
meaning 1 mother
direction
meaning 2 grandmother
reference Bray_Brahui dictionary: 53
comment
ACCEPTED Realization 2
type Cognates
language 1 Gondi
language 2 Parji
lexeme 1 avval
lexeme 2 avva
meaning 1 mother
direction
meaning 2 grandmother (father's mother)
reference STARLING
comment Mandla Gondi (Phailbus) : avval Parji - Burrow, Bhattacharya, The Parji language (1953), 149 It's interesting: the form is not the main to describe the meaning "mother" in Dravidian family. Possibly, it was the kind of description of "elder relative woman" or "mother when she is old". Comment from STARLING: Notes : The stem is occasionally used with pronominal prefixes (Tamil, Gondi), but their usage is too localised to suggest that the situation was the same in PDR. The original meaning of the root is hard to establish; it could hardly have been simply 'mother' (as there already are two basic terms for 'mother' in PDR - the honorific *áma- and the neutral *aj-). More often than not, the semantics of the stem is closely linked to the idea of old age or being elder (cf. 'old woman'; 'grandmother'; 'matron'; 'elder brother's wife'). The relations of this root with PDR *átai are also unclear. I would venture to guess that the original differentiation is seen in Kolami-Gadba, where *átai = 'father's sister', whereas *ávai = 'father's mother', but this is very flimsy evidence. // Present in 4/6 branches.
ACCEPTED Realization 3
type Polysemy
language Kannada
lexeme amma
meaning 1 mother
direction
meaning 2 grandmother
reference Kannada-English Etymological Dictionary: 51
comment
ACCEPTED Realization 4
type Internal cognates
language Romanian
lexeme mamaie
meaning 1 (Moldova, familiar) mother
direction
meaning 2 (Muntenia, Oltenia) grandmother
reference MDA2
comment
ACCEPTED Realization 5
type Polysemy
language Tamil
lexeme ammai
meaning 1 mother
direction
meaning 2 grandmother
reference Tamil lexicon: 100
comment Also: ammā (TL p.27); āyāḷ (TL 238); āycci (TL 236).