[Lingtyp] Kinship systems that distinguish age but not gender

Fri Jul 21 14:24:35 UTC 2017

David

Are there politeness differences in the Minangkabau system? C.f.. my
earlier post about Sasak polite vs. non-polite terms. Deference is of
course asymmetrical: owed to senior kin but not juniors.

Peter

On 21 Jul 2017 21:24, "David Gil" <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> Apologies to everyone, but some of what I said in previous postings about
> sibling terms in the languages of Indonesia turns out to be inaccurate.
>
> I had said that Minangkabau and other languages possess the following
> system:
>
> younger sibling
> older sister
> older brother
>
> In fact, I neglected to take into account a fourth term, older sibling,
> which results in the following system
>
> younger sibling
> older sibling
> older sister
> older brother
>
> So while the system still maintains the asymmetry whereby gender is only
> distinguished for older siblings, not for younger ones, the distinction is
> optional rather than obligatory.  Here are the amended text counts for
> Minangkabau and Jakarta Indonesian, with the older sibling term now thrown
> in to the mix:
>
> Minangkabau
> 591 - younger sibling
> 536 - older sibling
> 998 - older sister
> 1197 - older brother
>
> Jakarta Indonesian
> 3050 - younger sibling
> 3982 - older sibling
> 749 - older sister
> 710 - older brother
>
> So with older sibling now included, Jakarta Indonesian now falls into line
> with Minangkabau: in both languages, older siblings may be
> sex-differentiated while younger siblings aren't, and correspondingly,
> older siblings occur more frequently in texts than younger siblings.  (The
> main difference between the two languages is that amongst older siblings,
> sex differentiation occurs relatively more frequently in Minangkabau than
> in Jakarta Indonesian.)
>
> Apologies, once again, for the inaccuracy of the earlier postings.  (I'm
> certainly learning a lot about the languages that I work on from this
> thread.)
>
>
>
> On 21/07/2017 14:36, David Gil wrote:
>
> Two unrelated comments on Martin's latest.
>
> First, I think that one can indeed argue that sex is less important for
> cousins than for siblings.  One of several possible reasons:  Given a
> culture with nuclear families, limited bathroom facilities, and modesty
> constraints governing cross-sex bathing, whether my siblings were brothers
> or sisters would affect my daily life much more than whether my cousins,
> who I only met once a month, were male or female.
>
> Secondly, some very rough and ready frequency counts from two languages of
> Indonesia that distinguish gender for older siblings but not younger ones:
>
> Minangkabau
> 591 - younger sibling
> 998 - older sister
> 1197 - older brother
>
> Jakarta Indonesian
> 3050 - younger sibling
> 749 - older sister
> 710 - older brother
>
> Minangkabau conforms to what I take to be Martin's generalization:  older
> siblings are more important than younger ones, and this is reflected both
> in (a) a gender distinction, and (b) greater frequency, a roughly 4:1
> ratio.  However, Jakarta Indonesian exhibits a conflicting pattern, in
> which younger siblings are referred to roughly twice as frequently as both
> male and female older siblings together. These differences could be due to
> differences between the languages, or differences between the corpora, or
> both.  Lots more work needed here ...
>
>
>
> On 21/07/2017 10:39, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
>
> It is indeed an interesting suggestion (by Bingfu Lu) that sex
> neutralization in kinship terms is related to the importance of sex for
> observers. This factor may also explain that we often have
> sex-differentiated terms for domestic animals, but rarely for wild animals.
>
> But the "importance" of sex differentiation is not easy to assess. As
> Greenberg notes, there is a tendency to neutralize sex also in more remote
> relationships (e.g. with cousins, where even English neutralizes, and with
> in-laws), and it is hard to argue, for example, that sex is less important
> in cousins than in siblings. So maybe frequency of use is a better
> explanation after all? Does anyone have frequency counts for 'younger
> sibling' and 'older sibling' terms? (And frequency counts for domestic as
> opposed to wild animals?)
>
> I also have a comment on Maïa Ponsonnet's crictical remark concerning the
> term "universal":
>
> However, I wonder is calling such hypotheses "universals" too early can
> create other problems. We may then omit to disqualify the hypothesis, even
> after many, many counter-examples have been provided. So we may end up
> postulating universality based on say, 10 cases, and 10 years later still
> be busy providing counter-examples for what we still call a "(potential)
> universal" while say, 20 counter-examples, have already been provided.
>
> So perhaps calling it "hypothetical implication" may be safer?
>
> The danger certainly exists that some claims become very famous and are
> repeated and believed even though there is no good evidence for them (e.g.
> that spinach contains a lot of iron).
>
> But I feel that it is clear that every claim in science has the status of
> a hypothesis that is subject to potential disconfirmation. The differences
> reside in the amount of supporting evidence. The Konstanz Universals
> Archive <https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/> is a great resource both
> for references to claims of universals and for the basis of the claims
> (thus, without reading Greenberg (1966), one can see that universal No 1656
> is based on 120 languages).
>
> Martin
>
> On 21.07.17 01:16, bingfu Lu wrote:
>
> I agree with Martin’s bold claim.  It seems to be very natural in the
> following senses.
>
> First, from the formal perspective, babies are very likely to be
> neutralized in sex.  If there is a continuum of sex neutralization from the
> point of being very young (babies) to the point of very old, then, the
> younger section, which includes the babies, should be more likely to be
> neutralized.
>
> Second,  from the perspective of linguistic iconicity, babies tend to be
> sex-neutralized because their sex features are least developing. And it is
> natural, the less sex-developing, the easier to be sex-neutralized.
>
> According to the degrees of development in sex features, it might to be
> predicted that there may be some languages where the very old elders are
> neutralized in linguistic form, since very old elders are
> sex-retrodegraded.
>
> In short, the sex neutralization is more likely when the sex features are
> less strong and less important in age.
>
>
> ------------------------------
> On Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 5:10:32 PM GMT+8, Martin Haspelmath
> <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>
>
> On the basis of Turkish (*kardeş*) and Minangkabau (*adiak*), which
> neutralize the sex distinction in the younger sibling term, one could
> propose the following universal:
>
> "If a language makes a distinction between elder and younger siblings and
> neutralizes sex only in one type, then it neutralizes in younger siblings."
>
> This may seem bold, but I think that such bold formulations are productive
> in that they are likely to elicit responses from language specialists whose
> language goes against the generalization. (And if the bold generalization
> makes it into print somewhere, then one can even write an abstract on the
> basis of one's data and argue against a previous claim.)
>
> Now it so happens that a claim very similar to the one above has already
> been made, on p. 76-77 in Greenberg's chapter "Universals of kinship
> terminology", which is Chapter five of his most important work:
>
> Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. *Language universals, with special reference
> to feature hierarchies*. The Hague: Mouton.
>
> Greenberg formulates the generalization in terms of one kind of kinship
> being "marked", the other "unmarked". "Marked" features tend to be
> neutralized, so saying that younger siblings are "marked" amounts to the
> same as the above claim. (In my view of things, this would mean that some
> kinds of kinship features are more frequently used than others.)
>
> (Greenberg also says somewhere that masculine/male is unmarked, so he
> probably predicts that female terms ternd to be neuralized for age, thus
> answering Siva Kalyan's question.)
>
> So there are a lot of interesting predictions that could be tested if
> someone finally made a comprehensive world-wide database on kinship terms
> (I think some people near Hedvig are working on this).
>
> Martin
>
>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10	
> D-07745 Jena
> &
> Leipzig University
> IPF 141199
> Nikolaistrasse 6-10
> D-04109 Leipzig
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://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
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://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
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20170721/896924b5/attachment.htm>