Re: OT: Language & clans? Re: OT: Ukraine

Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sylvia Sotomayor" <kelen@...>
>
>
>> On Sunday 05 December 2004 13:40, Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>>
>>> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>>>
>>> I understood John's statement to mean that there exist kinship systems
>>> where all kinship terms are reciprocal, rather then "there exist kinship
>>> systems where there exist terms that are reciprocal". I'm intruiged now
>>> as
>>> to whether that's what he meant. It wouldn't seem to fit into the
>>> Sudanese-Hawaiian- Eskimo-Iroquois-Omaha-Crow (SHEIOC? SHECIO? HESICO?
>>> SEHICO?) classification, but maybe it's more a feature of discourse,
>>> rather
>>> than  of the underlying kinship system.
>>>
>
> I think John meant the latter: that there exist kinship systems where
> kinship terms are reciprocal but according to the nature of the
> relationship.  Maybe I don't understand Stephen's distinctions.  What I
> thought of immediately, as I began to imagine a Teonaht version of it, was
> that husband and wife would call each other "spouse," or some such term
> that
> had no gender distinction; that brother and sister would call each other
> "sibling" with no distinction in gender either; and even more delightfully
> weird, father and son, father and daughter, mother and son, mother and
> daughter, parents and children would call each other by a word that meant
> "parental-filial kinship relation."  Let's call it bazzyt, /ba'zit/.
> "Vazzyt!" says the child to his parent. What is it, vazzyt? says the parent
> to the child.  Of course if one wanted to address his father, one might say
> Vazzyt Hmyhhkal! (using the parent's first name).  Same with any of the
> children.  Same with aunt/uncle/niece/nephew, etc.
Yes, that's more or less what I meant. Actually the way I described it above
was a bit unrealistic (a language where _every_ kinship term could be used
reciprocally? Surely not!), but it was just after dinner and I'd had a bit
too much wine... John talked about langs in which "... you call your
<whatever> by the same word he or she calls you", Mark responded with the
example of English "cousin", but the situation in English (with reciprocal
"cousin" & "sibling", and maybe more) seemed to only marginally have this
feature. I was wondering if John was thinking of a language which had a
more thoroughgoing system of reciprocalness - exactly as you suggest :)


> How cool is that? :)
Very.

>
> And none of these terms could be applied to anybody else's family (in
> Teonaht).  You would never say "how is your vazzyt?"  That would be
> unconscionably rude, as Vazzyt is a name used very intimately.  It would be
> like saying "how is your Fred?" when Fred refers to your father.  You would
> use the outside word, Pantor.
>
> I don't know the Sudanese-Hawaiian-Eskimo-Iriquois-Omaha-Crow
> classification at all.
Ah, it's just the one that John linked to (and has been linked to before, by
IIRC Roger?...

http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/tutor/kinterms/termsys.html

A completely reciprocal system of kinship terms might not seem to fit into this
(apparantly universally applicable) system, but I suggested (clumsily) that it might
be a feature of discourse - more or less what you described with your Teonaht example -
Just because my Pantor & I call each other "Vazzyt", it doesn't mean that he isn't
my Pantor, and I'm not his <Frobnitz>.

 > But it's also possible to have everyone
 > call each other  "family-member," whether brother, sister, cousin, stepmother,
> father-in-law, nephew, etc.
A completely degenerate kinship terminology!

> Sally
s.
--
Stephen Mulraney   ataltane@ataltane.net
     Klein bottle for rent  ...  inquire within.