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

----- 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 would like to see a kinship system in which all the terms are
> reciprocal.
> I've kinda wanted that for Kelen, but I'm not sure how it would work,
> exactly. I can imagine a Keleñi person saying:
> selneñ anpára for 'we (paucal, exclusive (hence, dual)) are
> mo-dau-relation'
> But then, I think they also use animate nouns, like:
> mapára for 'mother, mother's-sister'.
> maláca for 'daughter, girl, young woman'.
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.

How cool is that? :)

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.  But it's also possible to have everyone call each other
"family-member," whether brother, sister, cousin, stepmother, father-in-law,
nephew, etc.  Was that what you had in mind, Stephen?  And Sylvia, how would
it not work in Kelen?  Curious, and still trying to figure Kelen out...

Sally

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