[Lingtyp] Kinship systems that distinguish age but not gender

[Nick Enfield]

Lao has qaaj4 older brother, qùaj4 older sister and nòòng4 younger sibling.

This system has a neat affordance. When talking to a child whose mother is pregnant, one often wants to refer to the unborn child, the soon-to-arrive younger sibling. The word nòòng4 allows you to leave the sex unspecified, and avoid a disjunction (brother or sister) as is needed in English. This issue does not arise when talking to children about their older siblings because of course the sex is known. This could contribute to a bias towards the typological prediction.

Nick

--
Sent from phone

On 19 Jul 2017, at 20:02, Rik DB <rdbusser at gmail.com<mailto:rdbusser at gmail.com>> wrote:


Dear Hedvig,

In case you need another one: Bunun (Austronesian) has tuqas 'older sibling' and nauba 'younger sibling'.

Am I wrong to assume that this is quite common in Western Austronesian?

Best,

Rik

———————————————
Rik De Busser, Assistant Professor
Graduate Institute of Linguistics
National Chengchi University
ORCID: 0000-0003-2750-3364
www.rdbusser.com<http://www.rdbusser.com>

On 19/07/2017 16:31, Hedvig Skirgård 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-grammars.blogspot.



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