(no subject)

I see from today's Language Log that Arnold Zwicky had the same reaction as I did to the musing of Griffith's character on Six Feet Under on the lack of a word for "parent whose child has died". As he rightly points out, this experience was simply dirt common in all human societies until relatively recently. He also touches on the issues of salience. While losing a child may have a lot of psychological significance, it doesn't have the same social impact of losing a spouse or a parent. Again, in most societies, there are important issues of legal status and responsibility concerning parentless children and spouseless adults that simply don't arise when a child dies.