[Lingtyp] Someone whose father ...

[Mira Ariel]

Hi,

Hebrew has an adj. shakul – one who lost a close relative. It must collocate with a noun, and specifically with mother, father, parent (less commonly, with brother and sister). Impossible with grandmother, uncle, grandchild, etc.

Note that a bereaved parent is most likely not symmetric with 'orphan'. An orphan is young. You wouldn't say about an adult that she is (currently) an orphan. But the shakul  adj. can apply till old age.
Empathy, social consequences etc. determine the use, no doubt.

By the way, Hebrew also has ariri 'one who has no children' (distinct from akar 'can't have children'). This is also socially consequential. I'm not even sure if a parent who lost their only child would count as ariri or not. It's certainly not the central meaning, although the consequence is the same – "the family is discontinued". Not surprisingly, this lexeme is disappearing these days.

Best,
Mira Ariel

From: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Jess Tauber
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 3:28 PM
To: Pier Marco Bertinetto <piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it>
Cc: list, typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Someone whose father ...

Perhaps the loss of a child is far more common in everyday experience (from failed pregnancy to accidents to disease than loss of an adult caregiver. Is there some sort of avoidance issue here leading to the relative rarity of such terminology? A child is the responsibility of an adult, so losing one is a potentially a stain on their reputation, whereas loss of an adult is generally not usually the fault of the child.

Jess Tauber

On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 4:47 PM Pier Marco Bertinetto <piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it<mailto:piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it>> wrote:
Dear Raffaele,
looking at the issue from the other side (i.e., a child who lost her/his parents), you might consider this rather odd, idiosyncratic lexicalization of Wayana [way, Cariban]:
pikuku-tpë (lit. child-RETROSPECTIVE) = ‘orphan’ (Camargo 2008, ex. 26).

Camargo, Eliane. 2008. Operadores aspectuais de estado marcando o nome en wayana
(caribe). LIAMES 8. 85–104. [Aspectual operators of state marking the noun in Wayana].

Ciao
Pier Marco


Il giorno mer 16 feb 2022 alle ore 11:28 Raffaele Simone <rsimone at os.uniroma3.it<mailto:rsimone at os.uniroma3.it>> ha scritto:

Dear colleagues,

words like widower and orphan imply a complex web of relationships. An orphan is someone whose father or mother has died; a widower is someone whose wife or husband has died.

Do you know any language in which there are words that mean "someone to whom a child has died", "someone to whom a brother or sister has died" etc.?

Thanks,

R Simone

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