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Reconstructing kinship in Australia the role of
semantic change and system change constraints

• Patrick McConvell
• AIATSIS/ANU

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THE SYMBIOSIS OF LINGUISTICS AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN
KINSHIP STUDIES

• Hages linguistic turn in diachronic kinship
  studies - Clarks proto-Polynesian
  reconstructions showed developments to be
  different to what anthropologists had proposed
• Comparative linguistic evidence is obviously
  crucial for an evaluation of Allens theory or
  for similar theories of irreversibility in the
  evolution of kinship systems. (Hage 2001)
• The separation of anthropology and comparative
  linguistics has been much to the detriment of
  progress with diachronic issues in ethnology
  (Hage 2001 citing Blust 1993).

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PAMA-NYUNGAN KINSHIP

• Pama-Nyungan (Pny) is a language family which
  covers most of the Australian continent except
  for the central northern tropics and Tasmania.
• Amid much other evidence for Pama-Nyungan as a
  family is the existence of ancestral kinship
  roots and suffixes reflexes of which are found
  dotted all over the Pny area but only in one
  adjacent Non-Pny area, where the forms are
  borrowed
• An example is the term kami mothers mother
  with a distribution of reflexes illustrated on
  the next slide
• The complex form kami(ny)-jarr womans
  daughters child (reciprocal of MM) is also
  reflected in various Pny languages across a broad
  area. Because of its discontinuous distribution
  it is highly unlikely to have been spread by
  diffusion.

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pPNy kami mothers mother
kami-ny-jarr grandchild,mostly wDC ltmaternal
grandkin/grandchild dyad
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AUSTKIN DATABASE http//austkin.pacific-credo.fr
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• KAMI REFLEXES HAVE A NUMBER OF MEANINGS
  INCLUDING FATHERS MOTHER. WHY DO I SAY KAMI
  MEANT MOTHERS MOTHER?
• There are more reflexes meaning MM than any other
  meaning - not a convincing argument by itself.
• kami(ny)jarr reflexes mean womans daughters
  child the reciprocal of mothers mother in
  languages without a kami reflex (except for
  Yolngu, which we will look at later).
• There is another root papi- which is widespread
  and reconstructable to pPNy which generally means
  FM. A proto-system with two FMs and no MM is
  implausible.
• If it is MM it forms a recognised type of type of
  kinship system - Kariera (more on this later)
• First, lets look at where it has another meaning
  - FM - and why.

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MEANINGS OF KAMI REFLEXES
kami(ny)-jarr grandchild
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In Gumbaynggirr, south of Yugambeh, FM is kami
and MM is paapany. This reverses the probable
Proto-Pama-Nyungan meanings kami MM papi
FM. The extension of the papi- reflex to MM
might have caused this. In the Karnic sub-group
of languages, a new term for MM comes (which is
found elsewhere) kanyi- and kami switches to FM -
the order and causal relations of these changes
cannot be certain at this stage of research.
Whether the two changes MMgtFM in the Lake Eyre
and neighbouring regions and north-eastern New
South Wales are independent or related has not
yet been established.
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YOLNGU (North-east Arnhem Land) gaminyarr mans
daughters child (reciprocal of FM) not the same
meaning as MM and its reciprocal womans
daughters child This is the same change MMgtFM
as in the Lake Eyre region and Northern New South
Wales.
CHANGE OF KAMI in three regions via
polysemy MMgt MM, FM gtFM
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TYPES OF KIN EQUATION

• Merger within parallel and within cross
• (Kariera)
• Merger of same gender (grandmother-grandfather
  )
• Alternate generation equivalence (sibling
  parallel grandparent cross-cousin cross
  grandparent)
• Consanguineal-affinal (prescriptive)
• Skewing (adjacent generation mother
  cross-cousin etc)

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KARIERA SYSTEMS
The above are Kariera systems that do not
differentiate gender in the grandparent
generations but other systems do eg Yolngu ngathi
MF FMB momu FM MFZ
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THOMSON (1972)
Ayapathu (Rigsby)
Kariera
Prescriptive equations
Omaha skewing
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KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE SYSTEMS IN CAPE YORK
PENINSULA AND N.E.ARNHEM LAND
Ayapathu
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A hypothesis about proto-Pama-Nyungan grandparent
terms

• kami- MM
• papi- FM
• ngaji- MF
• (the root for FF remains less clear) ?mayi-li
  ?pula

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Is the proto-Pama-Nyungan kinship system
Dravidian/Kariera?

• Cross and parallel are distinguished. If in
  addition there was a gender distinction, so that
  the following equations existed it probably was
• kami- MM FFZ
• papi- FM MFZ
• ngaji- MF FMB
• (the root for FF remains less clear) ?mayi-li
  ?pula

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CONCLUSIONS

• A number of kinship terms can be reconstructed to
  high-level subgroupings in Australia including to
  proto-Pama-Nyungan
• This provides additional support for the
  existence of Pama-Nyungan
• The terms often vary in meaning across the
  continent so reconstruction of meaning can be an
  exacting task
• However the systems one can plausibly reconstruct
  are highly constrained by what we know of
  possible systems world-wide and in Australia
• Further, change in meaning is also constrained by
  the principle that generally, change from meaning
  A to B proceeds via a stage of polysemy A/B and
  the limited number of possible polysemies that
  exist in kinship systems eg FMMM or FMMF are
  common but MF rare
• In some cases, change in the meaning of a kinship
  term may be part of a bundle of shared
  innovations that defines a sub-group
• However because the polysemies involved naturally
  occur independently, this in not always the case