Patrick McConvell AIATSIS/ANU

1. ‘Reconstructing kinship in Australia: the role of semantic change and system change constraints’ Patrick McConvell AIATSIS/ANU

2. THE SYMBIOSIS OF LINGUISTICS AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN KINSHIP STUDIES • Hage’s ‘linguistic turn’ in diachronic kinship studies - Clark’s proto-Polynesian reconstructions showed developments to be different to what anthropologists had proposed • ‘Comparative linguistic evidence is obviously crucial for an evaluation of Allen’s 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).

3. 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 ‘mother’s mother’ with a distribution of reflexes illustrated on the next slide • The complex form *kami(ny)-jarr ‘woman’s daughter’s 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.

4. pPNy *kami ‘mother’s mother’ *kami-ny-jarr ‘grandchild,mostly wDC’ <‘maternal grandkin/grandchild dyad’

5. AUSTKIN DATABASE http://austkin.pacific-credo.fr

6. *KAMI REFLEXES HAVE A NUMBER OF MEANINGS INCLUDING ‘FATHER’S MOTHER’. WHY DO I SAY *KAMI MEANT ‘MOTHER’S MOTHER’? • There are more reflexes meaning MM than any other meaning - not a convincing argument by itself. • *kami(ny)jarr reflexes mean ‘woman’s daughter’s child’ the reciprocal of ‘mother’s 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 FM’s 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, let’s look at where it has another meaning - FM - and why.

7. MEANINGS OF *KAMI REFLEXES *kami(ny)-jarr ‘grandchild’

8. 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 MM>FM in the Lake Eyre and neighbouring regions and north-eastern New South Wales are independent or related has not yet been established.

9. YOLNGU (North-east Arnhem Land) gaminyarr ‘man’s daughter’s child’ (reciprocal of FM) not the same meaning as MM and its reciprocal ‘woman’s daughter’s child’ This is the same change MM>FM as in the Lake Eyre region and Northern New South Wales. CHANGE OF *KAMI in three regions via polysemy MM=> MM, FM =>FM

10. 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)

11. 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

12. THOMSON (1972) Ayapathu (Rigsby) Kariera Prescriptive equations Omaha skewing

13. KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE SYSTEMS IN CAPE YORK PENINSULA AND N.E.ARNHEM LAND Ayapathu

14. A hypothesis about proto-Pama-Nyungan grandparent terms • *kami- MM; • *papi- FM; • *ngaji- MF • (the root for FF remains less clear) ?mayi-li ?pula

15. 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

16. 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 FM=MM or FM=MF are common but M=F 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