Re: Kinship terminology

On Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 08:18:14PM -0400, Nik wrote:
[snip]
> Completely unrelated to the words for parents?  I had no idea that
> remarriage was so common in Chinese society.
Well, some words aren't totally different, so there's some overlap; but
still, there are a lot of unique terms. As to remarriage... I'm not sure
if they're that common, probably less than in Western society, but it does
happen. Also, sometimes separation and second marriage or even bigamy
happens too. (Incidentally, the second wife is called "small wife" in my
dialect, which implies some kind of inferiority from the first wife, the
"big wife". So go figure :-P )

[snip]
> Well, I still think there should be at least an optional way of
> distinguishing blood-relatives from marriage-relatives.
Sure, just don't go overboard like the Chinese tradition that insists on a
set of "more intimate" terms for relatives related through the father, and
"less intimate" terms for relatives on the mother's side. This especially
shows in the words for cousins -- cousins related through the father are,
in Mandarin, tang2ke1 (older male cousin) tang2ti4 (younger male cousin),
tang3jie3 (older female cousin) and tang2mei4 (younger female cousin).
Cousins on the mother's side are biao3ke1, biao3ti4, biao2jie3 and
biao3mei4, respectively. The superiority complex in this system is that
even with relatives on the father's side, if they are related through a
female, then they are called by the biao3- terms, not the tang2- terms.
So, for example, the son of my father's *sister* who is younger than I
would be called biao3ti4, not tang2ti4.

Anyway, I don't even know if this is accurate. I'm confused enough with
all these words already!! :-)

>  Not to mention
> a generic for uncle/aunt.  All relatives should have male/female/epicene
> forms, I think.
Yay! That's why I have 5 genders for my conlang: masculine, feminine,
epicene, double, and neuter. Epicene to be used for all occasions where
you want to refer to both masculine and feminine in a collective way, or
just don't wish the narrow it down to either masculine or feminine. Double
is used for married couples and hermaphroditic creatures, and neuter for
asexual creatures and inanimates. Most nouns can be inflected for
masculine, feminine, and epicene; some nouns can be inflected for all
genders. This way, you'll always have the appropriate gender to use.

[snip]
> > (Of course, all this rant doesn't mean I won't create a similar system in
> > my conlang... <evil g>)
>
> But of course!  :-)
:-) I probably won't create too complicated a system for my current
conlang though, 'cos it's almost like a constructed IAL in my
con-universe! It was basically derived from existing languages in the
early Kingdom Era by the Experts, who added a lot of their own
philosophies to it. Because the Experts were also the ones considered to
be more educated and advanced, they had a strong influence over the
education system, and that became a factor that made the IAL become widely
accepted and used. Of course, I'm not suggesting this is how IAL's in the
real world should be implemented... this only works in my own universe
AFAIK! (Gasp, don't post this on auxlang, I might not be able to live it
down ;-)

Coming back to my point -- the Experts aren't very big on familial
relationships; they are more on the intellectual side. Hence, they'd pay
much more attention to terms for teachers, trainers, apprentices and
students of various ranks and classes than to complex familial addresses.
(Of course, this still doesn't mean terms from ancestor languages aren't
carried over by native speakers: this might *possibly* imply an even more
complex system of terminology differentiated by geographical region,
reflecting the different roots from the different ancestor langs...)
<evil g>


T