If "papa", "dada" and "mama" were only common in languages because they are the first noises made by babbling babies... then the meaning would tend to random I.E. Papa and Dada would be found to mean Mother as often as Father and conversely Mama would be found be Father as often as Papa and Dada
If they are found to have a fixed meaning in most languages I.E. Mama as seem to always be for Mother Papa and Dada always is Father…. The would point to a common language root
That was kind of what I was thinking.
This could explain where homosexuals got their start when they could tell there mother from their fathers.
...unless there were some other constant involved, such as the sounds a baby makes when nursing; i.e "mama" or similar. That would tend to create a bias towards mama being assigned to the mother, leaving "papa" or "dada" to be assigned to the father.
Ma or ma-ma for mother is simply the first sound a baby tends to make and the first association is the mother's breast, thus the word "mammary" in English and Mama.
Perhaps not. Ma is the probable sound when baby is nuzzling at the breast.
If the first babbling is ma-ma-ma that would bias it towards the mother, because Daddy is rather unlikely to be suckling the child.