Re: Brothers-in-law
| From: | Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, May 4, 2006, 14:00 |
|---|
On 04/05/06, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:
> Brothers-in-law
> ------------------
>
> Here's something to ponder when you're next constructing a society, and a language
> to suit its needs.
>
> In English the term "brother-in-law" means two different relations:
> * my brother-by-my-marriage = the man whose sister I married (my wife's brother)
> * my brother-by-his-marriage = the man who married my sister (my sister's husband)
>
> Some people say that it includes this relation:
> * my brother-by-our-marriages = the man that my wife's sister married (my
> sister-in-law's husband)
>
> To me, the term "-in-law" poses the question: "Under what law?"
Well, there's also defacto in-laws. And even someone who's not in a
defacto relationship but just has a boy-/girlfriend will describe
their other's parents as in-laws so to me it is a nice example of
fossilisation & semantic drift.
For that matter I think at least in (some states of?) Australia,
"defacto" relationships have some sort of recognition in law so
they're not really "de facto" relationships. I love it when semantic
drift does these things, and this seems to be a domain in which they'd
be very common.
--
Tristan.
Reply