Relatives and Relations in Paluai

Humaniora Vol 30, No 3, 2018

This paper explores matrilineal kinship in the Buka area, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, from the perspective of saltwater people on Pororan Island. In Bougainville and elsewhere in Melanesia, anthropological research has highlighted the importance of joint work in the gardens, of sharing and exchanging garden food, and of negotiations of access to land for kinship and relatedness in the region. Where does this leave saltwater people, who often have only small areas of land of their own, take little interest in gardening and depend on traded sweet potatoes or imported rice for meeting their subsistence needs? In the first part of this paper, I discuss the "landed" bias in anthropological research on kinship, including matrilineal kinship. I then suggest complementary descriptive and analytic terms that may be useful for researchers who want to understand kin relations among saltwater people, based on my experiences among Pororan Islanders in Bougainville. Finally, I indicate the theoretical contribution that these terms can make to research on kinship in landed settings, as well.

Oceanic Linguistics, 2001

Savosavo kinship terminology is remarkable in that it covers fifteen generations, a feature unique in its immediate geographical context, the Solomon Islands, and rare cross-linguistically. The aim of this paper is to present the kinship terminology system of the easternmost Papuan language from both an anthropological and a linguistic perspective, thus providing a comprehensive account of the terms, the system they form, their morphosyntactic and pragmatic features, and how they are used in everyday life. Both consanguineal and affinal kin are considered.

Ghana Journal of Linguistics

This study, synchronically, describes and explicates the phenomenon of kinship terms in Likpakpaln, a Gur member of the Niger-Congo phylum, spoken mainly in the northern parts of Ghana. It focuses on the addressive usage of kinship terms. I use observation (both participant and non-participant) as a principal ethnographic data collection technique, supplemented by the semi-structured interview, informal conversation and my native speaker introspection. The analysis of data is informed by Dell Hyme's ethnography of communication as a theoretical frame. Based on the data analysed, I argue that kinship addresses in Likpakpaln can be categorised into three major types: agnatic, matrilateral and affinal kinship address forms, of which matrilateral and affinal kinship addresses are by complementary filiation. I also show that communicative ends have a significant influence on the vocative usage of kinship terms in interlocution among the Bikpakpaam (the Konkomba people). I further argue that the repertoire of Likpakpaln kinship addresses and the pattern of usage of these kinship addresses in communicative interactions is greatly tied to the Bikpakpaam kinship structure and social universe. Finally, I observe that there is a perceptible level of intercultural intrusion on the kinship address terms used among the Bikpakpaam.

Linguistic Typology, 2014

Kin terms in some languages have suppletive roots according to the person of the possessor, as in Kaluli na:la ‘my daughter’, ga:la ‘your daughter’ versus ida ‘her/his daughter’. Suppletion is generally seen as a language-specific morphological peculiarity, but in this context there are a number of lexical and morphological similarities across languages, suggesting the motivation may also lie in the nature of kin terms themselves. We offer a typological assessment suppletive kin terms through a case study of the languages of New Guinea, where the phenomenon appears to be particularly common.

This study explores the kinship terms used by the first and second generation of Hokkien Chinese Indonesians in Surabaya Indonesia. It further examines the changes in the kinship terms used between the two generations. The lineal and collateral kinship terminologies represent the basic taxonomy of kinship relations in every society and culture. This study uses Sociolinguistics by looking into the correlation between kinship terms and Hokkien Chinese Indonesians in Surabaya. Based on the data collected through a questionnaire, the study identifies 38 kinship terms used in Hokkien Chinese Indonesian family including relatives. The study also shows that as social conditions change, the kinship terms of the first and second generation have slightly changed. The findings of the study particularly help understand the kinship terms used in the Hokkien Chinese Indonesian context. Moreover, the study emphasizes the importance of kinship terms in social relationships that determines family line relationships, establishes the relation between two or more generations, and assigns guidelines for interactions between people.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2004

This article considers the implications of imagining kinship as a non-embodied relation. In recent years, it has become commonplace to argue that relatedness is a gradually acquired state that can be built over time and by non-sexual means. In this view, relationships of consanguinity are not given at birth but are created through purposeful acts of feeding and caring. Here, I address a question that has been less commonly asked by anthropologists: need kinship always be imagined as entailing an embodied connection? Is there a way of thinking about cross-generational relationships that does not ground them in bodily connectedness, or, at the very least, one that imagines contexts in which they are not embodied as a substantial link between people? Drawing upon data collected among Kamea of Papua New Guinea, I describe a world in which the parentchild tie is conceptualized as one that is inherently non-embodied.

Linguistics

Like many other Oceanic and Kanak languages of New Caledonia, Zuanga-Yuanga [ZY] has classifiers restricted to the possession of nouns denoting food, drink, animals and plants; it also has dichotomous direct and indirect adnominal possessive constructions, which are generally labeled inalienable or alienable in the Oceanic literature. These terms refer to a distinction between close versus distant structural marking, which do not strictly correlate with lexical-semantic categories. For instance, kinship nouns are split over the two types of constructions, distinguishing reference from address kinship terms, not in terms of semantic distinctions between close versus distant kinship types. The split for body-part nouns is between directly possessed dedicated terms and indirectly possessed metaphorical body terms, not in terms of permanent versus removable parts, or temporary body properties. In ZY possessive constructions correlate with fairly strict possessee noun classes belonging t...

Paper presented at LCRC, JCU Cairns, 21 November 2012

1996

A great deal of work has been done on A and 0 possession in the various Polynesian languages. 1 As is now well known, possessive pronouns and possessive prepositions in most Polynesian languages come in two forms. For example, to express the meaning of 'my' in Tongan, either one of the two forms 'eku or hoku is used. 'His' is expressed by either 'ene or hono, and 'your' by either ho '0 or ho. The meaning of the possessive preposition 'of can be expressed by either 'a or ' 0. The first of these pairs of possessives, 'eku 'my', 'ene 'his', ho 'o 'your' and 'a 'of , belong to the possessive category called A and the second, hoku 'my', hono 'his', ho 'your' and ' 0 'of, belong to the possessive category called O. This division of possessives into the two categories of A and 0 permeates the entire possessive system of Tongan, as is the case also with most other Polynesian languages. This is an expanded version of the paper delivered at FIeOL, Port Vila, July 1993. I want to thank my teacher, Ross Clark, for comments and discussions while both versions of the paper were being prepared.

Linguistik Indonesia, 2015

The possessor-possessed, or "preposed possessor" syntactic order, has long been considered a typological feature common to many Eastern Lesser Sunda Islands, labelled either "Central-Malayo Polynesian languages" or "East Nusantara languages", although these groupings do not exactly coincide. In this paper, the syntax and semantism of possession in some languages of the Eastern Lesser Sunda Islands are described. There is a wide variety of possession marking systems in the Eastern Lesser Sunda Islands, from purely analytic languages such as Lio to highly flexional languages such as Lamaholot. The morphological contrast between alienable and inalienable possession is widespread among the languages of this area. The study focuses on Lamaholot, spoken at the eastern-most end of Flores, and the three neighbouring islands of Adonara, Solor and Lembata. This language has a complex possessive system, involving suffixes, free morphemes, a specific preposition, and possessive pronouns, along with person agreement and morpho-phonological features. Lamaholot can be considered a highly representative example of East Nusantara languages.

Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 1993

Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 2023

Note: This version is a draft, but has highlights and notes with corrections that you can read if you download the article. Go to https://benjamins.com/catalog/ltba.23006.gat to download the published and final version of this article. This paper presents a comprehensive synchronic study of Stau kinship terms, offering a detailed analysis of their classifications and characteristics. Stau kinship terms are categorized into vocative and referential/possessive forms. Vocative kinship terms follow the intonation pattern of other vocative phrases, particularly barytonesis, which involves stress and intonation shifting from the second syllable to the first. The paper explores the distinctions within younger sibling relationships, dividing kinship terms into male Ego and female Ego categories based on the sex of the connecting relative. The kinship prefix æ-, commonly found in Qiangic languages, is exclusively used in vocative and referential/possessive kinship terms referring to older kin (both male and female). The study also identifies specific vocative and referential kinship terms that describe dyads of kinship relationships, similar to Tibetic languages like the Amdo dialects spoken in Stau-speaking areas. Stau maintains a sex-based distinction for kinship terms across all generations. Referential/possessive kinship terms in Gen−1 and Gen−2 differentiate between lineal and collateral relationships, while in vocative terms, only Gen−1 distinguishes between lineal and collateral relatives. Gen+1 consanguineal vocative kinship terms exhibit distinctions for lineal/collateral and matrilateral/patrilateral relationships. However, the matrilateral/patrilateral distinction is neutralized in Gen+1 affinal vocative kinship terms. Gen+1 affinal referential/possessive kinship terms differentiate matrilateral and patrilateral relationships when using a possessive phrase, but not when using the simple base term. Age relative to Ego plays a distinct role in Gen0 kinship terms, both vocative and referential/possessive. Sibling terms are differentiated from cousin terms in Gen0 referential/possessive terms using the thɛv(=ɡə ŋə-rə) ‘is a relative’ copula phrase. Regarding cousin kinship typology, Stau aligns with the Hawaiian type in the vocative and the Eskimo type in the referential. The Hawaiian type serves as the foundational basis due to shared roots in both vocative and referential contexts. For Gen+1 terms, Stau follows the Sudanese system, each consanguineal kin with their own term. Gen−1 terms follow the Eskimo system.

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America

This work focuses on kinship terms in Lio, an understudied Austronesian language spoken in Flores, Indonesia. We describe the Lio kinship terms and compare them to available data on other nearby Austronesian languages. Preliminary observations show examples of alternate generation terms which have not been discussed in previous literature. These alternate generation terms are also divided by gender, a quality that has not been discussed in the Central Flores languages literature.