Re: [TIED] Re: Cousin (solution)

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, June 19, 2000 1:28 AM

Subject: Re: [TIED] Re: Cousin (solution)

 

Mark writes:

 

Family terms are always interesting. Mallory says PIE was an Omaha II system, whereas modern English (and most European languages) are an Eskimo system.

 

PIE *nepot- meant nephew/grandson. I suspect a better explanation is that the word means 'male of the generation after you whose genetic makeup is one-fourth of your own'.

 

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In a pure Omaha system, the kinship terminology is systematically skewed as a result of treating a woman's brother as if he were her father (so that the maternal uncle is classed with the father's father, and the sister's children are equated with grandchildren). It cannot be denied that the PIE kinship system included some Omaha-like elements, but they are restricted to relations between uncles and nephews or between brothers-in-law, and their significance should not be overrated.

 

In Latin, nepos meant 'grandson (a son's or daughter's son)'; the meaning 'nephew' is very late (post-Augustan). Skt napa:t and Old Lithuanian nepuotis mean 'grandson' as well. It looks as if *nepot-/*nept- had originally referred to granchildren only and *xauxos had meant 'grandfather' (paternal or maternal; the term for 'grandmother' may have been *xanos; at any rate Hittite hannas matches Latin anus 'old woman'); however, the terms for the maternal uncle (Lat. avunculus, Slavic *ujI < *aujos < *xaux-jo-s) and the nephew (Greek anepsios, Slavic *ne(s)tijI < *nept-[i]jos) had been DERIVED from the "grand" terms.

 

The husband's brother was called *daiwe:r. The wife's brother was possibly *swe:kurjos or some similar derivative of *swekuros 'husband's father' (cf. Geman Schwager 'brother-in-law'). The (oldest?) brother of the wife was apparently her ONLY relative for whom her husband's family needed special terms. His exceptional status probably reflected his function as the one who formally gave his sister away in a marriage ceremony and later represented her kin in dealings with the in-laws. 'Little Granddad' may have been a kind of honorific rather a true "Omaha" term. Omaha proper would have required different words for maternal and paternal grandparents, etc. -- something that PIE doesn't seem to have had.

 

Piotr