In-law kinship terms?
From: | Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> |
Date: | Saturday, March 10, 2007, 17:01 |
For years gzb has gotten by with phrasal circumlocutions for
describing in-laws: e.g.
fru liqw-i req'jxy
brother relationship-of wife
sister-in-law
I've decided to add a couple of symmetrical affixes
for deriving in-law (and step-relationship) kinship terms:
-mla: a spouse of one's relative
-toxl: a relative of one's spouse
So the English "brother-in-law" or "sister-in-law" would
be translated in at least two ways,
tax-mla sibling's spouse
tax-toxl spouse's sibling
In fact there is also
tax-mla-toxl: spouse's sibling's spouse
tax-toxl-mla: sibling's spouse's sibling
The first of these English also describes as "brother-" or "sister-in-law"
(at least in my 'lect); as for the second, I'm not sure if English has
a term for it.
An interesting property of these suffixes is how they work
with {kyn}, "parent", and {fru}, "child", in comparison
to how English describes the same relationships:
kyn-mla stepmother, stepfather
kyn-toxl mother-in-law, father-in-law
fru-toxl stepson, stepdaughter
fru-mla son-in-law, daughter-in-law
English considers the more salient property of the relationship
to be whether is involves a remarriage after death or divorce,
while gzb considers the more salient property to be whether
the person is related to you through your spouse or is a
spouse of someone you're blood kin to. Or so it seems to
me; alternate analyses welcome.
The terms for "uncle/aunt (by blood)" is still in
flux in gzb (I've fluctuated between "kyn-tax" and "tax-kyn",
neither of which seems quite right); whenever I
figure out what it is, the suffix -mla will tell me what
"uncle/aunt by marriage" is.
How do your conlangs describe kinship by marriage?
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm
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