[Tibeto-burman-linguistics] kinship terms for 'cousins'

[JX Fortier]

Hi Mickey,

I’m glad you reached out since it’s such an interesting subject and kinship
terms have many layers of nuance.

For example, Raute (ISO rau) kinship terms show a discourse-sensitive
asymmetry in possessive marking. The term ya ‘mother’ behaves as an
inalienable noun in personal narratives, where it must be morphologically
possessed (e.g. dzĩ-ya ‘my mother’), though bare use is permitted in
generic discourse. In contrast, paksa ‘father’—from PST *pjax—never takes
possessive morphology, can be freely used without ego-anchoring, and
participates in regular number marking (paksa SG, pakaal PL), with -aal
functioning as a general pluralizer.

This suggests that maternal kinship is grammatically encoded as
ego-relational, while paternal kinship is encoded as a socially autonomous
category. It is essentially a case of "respect one’s father and I know my
mother!"

Best regards,

Jana Fortier

*Best regards,*
Jana Fortier

jxfortier at gmail.com       jfortier at ucsd.edu
https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/3043391783







On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 10:43 PM Yuan-Lin Yang <firstboy11th at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Jana (if I may):
>
> Thank you very much for providing the help here. For me, the discovery was
> unexpected, as originally it was not my attempt to collect kinship terms.
> But for the next field session (probably next month) I will try to get a
> clear picture of it, and then consult you with the terms provided.
>
> Sincerely,
> Mickey.
>
>
> JX Fortier <jxfortier at gmail.com>於 2026年2月10日 週二，下午11:15寫道：
>
>> Hi there, thanks for reaching out about kinship nomenclature which can be
>> tricky. If you’re talking about forms of address, And want to know the
>> kinship system name used, cross culturally, send us the actual terms Which
>> are used by ego for the following – F, M, FB, FZ (Father‘s sister), MB, MZ,
>> S, D, FBS, FBZ, MBS, MBZ, FZS, FZD, And MZS, MZD.
>>
>>
>> *Best regards,*
>> Jana Fortier
>>
>> jxfortier at gmail.com       jfortier at ucsd.edu
>> https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/3043391783
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 6:51 AM Yuan-Lin Yang <firstboy11th at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Tibeto-Burmanists:
>>>
>>> I am currently working on Taunggyi (Northern) Pa'O, a Karenic language
>>> mainly spoken in the Shan State, Myanmar. Through yesterday's field session
>>> with my consultant, I learnt that their language does not have specific
>>> kinship terms for 'cousins' or 'ego's father/mother's brother/sister's
>>> child(ren)'. Instead, they just call them 'uncle/aunt's child/son/daughter'
>>> (but they do distinguish uncles or aunts of different ages and sides). And
>>> I have also tried to check whether such a phenomenon is prevalent in TB
>>> languages with ChatGPT, yet it has only found that Burmese, Lahu, and
>>> Lepcha seem to behave in the same way.
>>>
>>> Thus, purely out of interest, I would like to know if similar phonomena
>>> is also found in the languages you work on. And if your language(s) happen
>>> to be other special cases, you are welcome to share as well.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Mickey,
>>> MA student, Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University.
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>> Tibeto-Burman-Linguistics mailing list
>>> Tibeto-Burman-Linguistics at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>
>>> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tibeto-burman-linguistics
>>>
>>
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