Woman's Brother/Sister-in-Law

[Koontz John E]

The foregoing led me to this messy set:

s^ic^?e'ku 'her husband's brother; her sister's husband'
sc^e'phaNku ~ s^c^e'phaNku  'her husband's sister; her brother's wife'

Note correction in accent.  Also note that Buechel seems to get as
confused by these in-law terms as I do.  I think he's not always right
about his definitions.  These are from Lesser!

Note that in most cases in Mississippi Valley Siouan conception it would
be ideal for brothers to marry sisters.  (Also for a polygynous man to
marry sisters.)  So, 'her sister's husband = her husband's brother' is
something of a potential identity as well as having a nice terminological
symmetry.  And, of course, 'her brother's wife = her husband's sister' is
the other side of the coin.  Imagine the world is divided into two descent
groups, exchanging spouses.  Of course, it would get awkward in the next
generation, if there were only two descent groups.

Lesser gives the corresponding Yankton terms as

s^ic^?e'ku
c^e'phaNku

Actually, he gives s^e'phaNku, but I think it's a notational problem.

Santee (Lesser has more notational problems here) has

s^ic^?e'ku
ic^e'phaNku 'her husband's sister'

For Assiniboine Lesser gives first persons only:

mis^ii'j^e
mis^ii'j^ep[h]aN

>>From these, it looks like the forms for Proto-Dakotan might be

*s^ic^?e'=ku 'her husband's brother; her sister's husband'
*s^ic^(?)e'-phaN=ku 'her husband's sister; her brother's wife'

The feminine is formed by adding -phaN.  I'm not sure where phaN comes
from - probably not phaN 'woman's work bag'! - but it might be connected
with the Santee cardinal names *ha'phaN 'second daughter' and *he'phaN
'second son'.  It's not clear if the p in these forms is aspirated,
however.

The initial sequence *s^ic?e is considerably modified in the feminine
forms.  Teton reduces it to s^c^e' ~ sc^e' - contraction explains the
anomalous accent and the cluster probably accounts for the loss of
ejection - and Yankton has c^e'- and Santee ic^e'-.  Assinboine alone has
s^ij^e' < *s^ic^?e' in both forms.  I think the loss of ejection is
regular, but this is a point where I need some help from one of the
Assiniboine-Stoney experts!

In the rest of Mississippi Valley the terms reconstructable seem to be:

*s^ik?e' 'her husband's brother; her sister's husband'
*s^ikhaN' 'her husband's sister; her brother's wife'

I'm guessing aspiration of the k in Dhegiha from the weirdness in
Lesser's sets.  Winnebago and Ioway-Otoe have g < *kh, of course, and
Ioway-Otoe seems to lack the nasalization.

Comparing the Dakotan and other forms:

PDa *s^ic^?e      : POMV *s^ik?e'
PDa *s^ic^?e-phaN : POMV *s^ikhaN

reveals that Dakotan has c^? < *k? after i.  There seems likely to be some
sort of connection between the PDa *-phaN and the *-haN found in the rest
of MV Siouan.  The best I can do at present is:

PMV *s^ik ?e > *s^ik#?e
    *s^ik (?e=pi) haN > *s^ik#?ep#haN ~ *s^ik#haN

This is based primarily upon (a) the knowledge that many longer compounds
in Siouan are derived from phrases, and (b) a knowledge of phrase
structure in modern MV.  Asside from the possibility that *s^ik might 'be
'bad' (perhaps 'forbidden'?) and that -p(i) might be a plural, I haven't
any idea what the forms might mean.

!!! Note to those who hate kinship stuff and like morphology and also to
those who understand kinship systems a lot better than I do:  My apologies
and skip ahead to point A.

One further observation, somewhat complicated:  in Omaha-Ponca, taking
that as an example of patrilineal usage within Mississippi Valley, the
mother's clan at the level below mother's parents consists of "uncles and
mothers down the line" i.e., all the male descendents of mother's father
are ine'gi 'one's mother's brother' and all the female ones are ihaN
'one's mother'.  Not just mother's brothers (and sisters), and mother's
father's brother's sons (and daughters), etc., but also mother's brother's
sons (and daughters), etc.  Not mother's sister's sons (and daughters),
they'd be in mother's sister's husband's clan, quite possibly your own, if
mother and her sister had married brothers as expected.

The emphasis here - conveyed by the parentheses around the women - is on
lineal descent in the male line.  Men and women both have children, but
only men convey clan membership to their children.  Men's children are
members of the man's clan; women's children are members of their husband's
clan.  Men's sons produce more clan members; men's daughters produce
children for other clans.  Looking the other directioon, fatgher's a memb
er of the clan, but mother is not.  In some sense women produce children,
but men produce descendents.  Anyway, the descendents of an uncle
(mother's brother) are uncles and mothers.

In contrast, Dakotan kinship is bilateral, like European systems, rather
than patrilineal, so the further extensions of terms beyond the immediate
family are often quite different from those in Omaha-Ponca.  I'm not sure
I fully understand them, but, essentially, males of mother's generation on
her side of the family are leks^itku 'his/her mother's brother; his/her
uncle', while the females are huNku 'his/her mother'.  On father's side,
the males of his genration are atku'ku (or ateku) 'his/her father', while
the females are thuNwiNc^u 'his/her father's sister; his/her aunt' The
children of a leks^i are s^ic^?e-s^i(tku), if male, and c^e'phaN-s^i(tku),
if female, and the same applies to the children of thuNwiN'.

The anthropological term is "cross-cousins" - children of mother's brother
and father's sisters, as opposed to "parallel cousins" - children of
mother's sister or father's brother.  One way the Dakotan system does
differ from European systems is that the same-sex siblings of parents are
counted as parents, and the parallel cousins are counted as siblings.

Siouan patrilineal and matrilineal systems lack cross-cousin terms.

!!! Point A.  Safe to resume reading.

Anyway, the Dakota women's cross-cousin terms (in Teton, anyway) are:

s^ic^?e'-s^itku 'her male cross-cousin'
c^e'phaN-s^itku 'her female cross-cousin'

Notice that the Dakotan terms for women's male and female kin in these
"cross cousin"  lineages are the terms for their male and female
siblings-in-law with the element -s^i(t)- added.  As Dick Carter observed
somewhere, this element is probably *-s^ic^- < *-s^ik- 'bad', losing the
final consonant if nothing follows, and dissimilating it to t before the
third person possessive enclitic =ku.

!!! Skippers resume skipping.  Right to the next letter.

So the terms for 'woman's (male/female) sibling by marriage' are extended
to 'woman's (male/female) cousin', which is sort of what you'd expect if
your mother's brother had done the normal thing and married your father's
sister.  But, even if he hadn't, everybody in sight in your generation who
wasn't a 'bother' or 'sister' (part of the family) would be a *s^ic^?e' or
*s^ic^?e'-phaN, except that the 'bad' ones would be relatives by blood,
and not eligible spouses.

John E. Koontz
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz