[Lingtyp] Kinship systems that distinguish age but not gender
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Wed Jul 19 09:42:51 UTC 2017
Still on the topic of age and gender in siblings, here's a descriptive
problem that I've been puzzling over and have no solution for; I wonder
if anybody has any suggestions:
Like many other varieties of Malay/Indonesian, Papuan Malay has a simple
two-way distinction based on age:
kaka - 'older sibling'
ade - 'younger brother'
But where it differs from other similar varieties of Malay/Indonesian is
in what I guess I would call "usage": speakers very often use
collocations which serve to differentiate gender:
kaka laki-laki 'older.sibling male'
kaka perempuan 'older.sibling female'
ade laki-laki 'younger.sibling male'
ade perempuan 'younger.sibling female'
Similar collocations are available in other dialects, except that
they're much less frequent, and one would not be tempted to enter these
into a lexicon of kinship terms (any more than one would think of saying
that English has a kinship term 'older brother' on the basis of the
phrasal collocation used to express the concept).
But Papuan Malay feels different, in Papuan Malay people use these
collocations more frequently, and in contexts where they would not be
used in other varieties of Malay/Indonesian. So where in a description
of the language would this fact be represented? And where would this
fact be expressed in a cross-linguistic typology of kinship terms?
(At present, I am not aware of any properties other than those
pertaining to usage that would distinguish collocations such as "kaka
laki-laki" in Papuan Malay from its counterparts in other varieties of
Malay/Indonesian. In particular, I doubt that there is any phonological
evidence to the effect that such collocations are more closely bound in
Papuan Malay than in other varieties.)
On 19/07/2017 11:21, Kyla Quinn wrote:
> Okay, so looking through the parabank kin data we have so far....
>
> For Alex' question....out of 300 odd languages there are 82 that don't
> distinguish gender for younger siblings. There are 52 that don't
> distinguish gender for older siblings. There is a 51 language cross
> over between these two sets. Most of these are Austronesian and North
> American languages, with a few Australian and others scattered through.
>
> For Siva's question...
>
> There are some languages in the data set that exhibit this pattern but
> as a cross pattern, so if you are male you distinguish for older
> brother and younger brother but no age distinction for sisters and
> vice versa. There are three languages that exhibit precisely what
> you've asked and there are several other variations.
>
> Happy to answer any other questions based on our data!!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kyla
>
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 6:57 PM, Siva Kalyan
> <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com
> <mailto:sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On a slight tangent, are there languages where male siblings are
> distinguished for age but female siblings aren't (or vice versa)?
>
> Siva
>
>> On 19 Jul 2017, at 6:50 pm, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de
>> <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
>>
>> Matt beat me to it on Malay/Indonesian! I would just like to add
>> that while many (most?) varieties that I am familiar with work
>> the way Matt describes, some exhibit an asymmetry in which elder
>> siblings are distinguished for gender while younger ones are
>> not. This pattern is also evident in closely-related Minangkabau:
>>
>> adiak - 'younger sibling'
>> uda - 'elder brother'
>> uni - 'elder sister'
>>
>> And I suspect that it is common in other languages of the region.
>>
>>
>> On 19/07/2017 10:40, Matthew Carroll wrote:
>>> Hi Guys
>>>
>>> What about Indonesian/Malay? kakak/adik for elder/younger
>>> sibling respectively.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Matt
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Hedvig Skirgård
>>> <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com <mailto:hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear LINGTYP,
>>>
>>> Does anyone know of a language that has a distinction in the
>>> kinship system for age of referent (younger/older) without
>>> also having a distinction for gender of referent? For
>>> example, a language that marks siblings as being younger or
>>> older to ego without reference to being sister or brother.
>>>
>>> The hypothesis is that this doesn't happen/is very rare.
>>> We'd like to know if you've come across any examples of this.
>>>
>>> I'm asking for my friend Alex (cc:ed) who is not on the
>>> list. Please direct any responses or comments to her.
>>>
>>> *****
>>> *Tōfā soifua,*
>>> *Hedvig Skirgård*
>>> *
>>> *PhD Candidate
>>> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>>> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>>> School of Culture, History and Language
>>> College of Asia and the Pacific
>>> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
>>> The Australian National University
>>> Acton ACT 2601
>>> Australia
>>>
>>> Co-chair of Public Relations
>>> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>>> www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
>>>
>>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>> http://humans-who-read
>>> <http://humans-who-read/>-grammars.blogspot.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>> <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>> <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>> --
>> David Gil
>>
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>
>> Email:gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
>> Office Phone (Germany):+49-3641686834 <tel:+49%203641%20686834>
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia):+62-81281162816 <tel:+62%20812-8116-2816>
>>
>> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing
>> list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>> <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>
> --
>
> Kyla Quinn
>
> PhD Candidate
>
> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>
> College of Asia and the Pacific | The Australian National University
>
> cid:image001.jpg at 01D24FB2.4E587A40
--
David Gil
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20170719/a36a21ac/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 20516 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20170719/a36a21ac/attachment.jpe>
More information about the Lingtyp
mailing list