There are no well-attested words to refer
specifically to the wife's blood relatives (with the notable exception of her
[eldest?] brother). Latin has avia 'grandmother', but that's a
straightforward derivation from avus 'grandfather'. It seems to
me *awis is a mere theoretically motivated guess -- a form
needed to patch a gap in what's alleged to be an Omaha-like kinship pattern. I
can't see any real evidence for it. It seems to me that *xauxos
and *xanos both referred primarily to the father's parents;
however, they could also be applied to the other grandparents if need be. At any
rate linguistic discrimination between paternal and maternal grandparents is
rare in IE and where it occurs it is clearly of relatively recent origin.
Linguistic palaeontology is always a risky business, but it does look as if the
wife's brother had been the relative who represented her kin in dealings with
the husband's family, hence the apparent Omaha skewness (he was dignified by
being called "little grandpa" by his nephews and nieces) which however fails to
pervade the whole system.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2000 11:34
PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: kinship
systems
Piotr:
>But there is a lot of evidence for PIE
*xan(n)os 'grandmother': Hit.
>hannas, Lycian xNna-, Armenian han,
dialectal Old Greek annis, ano:,
>OHG ana (all meaning 'granny'), Latin
anus 'old woman'
While we're on the subject, Mallory has a diagram
in his book (In Search of
IEs) that shows the Omaha nature of the IE
kinship. *xanos would be
"paternal grandmother" specifically. The other
term shown is *awis for
"maternal grandmother". Of course, the
reconstruction must be out-of-date
and looks Pokorny-like. At any rate, it
looks like a derivation from the
word for "grandfather". So... what's the
scoop on *awis (or *heuhis
maybe??)