UC Irvine Structure and Dynamics Title KV(Ŋ)KV -Kinship Terms in the Australian Aboriginal Languages:First Part:Kaka 'Mother's Brother' Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/61z81220 Journal Structure and Dynamics, 9(2) Author Matthey de l'Etang, Alain Publication Date 2016 DOI 10.5070/SD992032331 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California KV(Ŋ)KV- KINSHIP TERMS IN THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES FIRST PART: KAKA ‘MOTHER’S BROTHER’ Alain Matthey de l’Etang Association d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques préhistoriques Paris FRANCE Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory Cambridge, Massachusetts USA
[email protected] Here, I report the pervasive distribution in numerous Aboriginal language groups all over Australia, of kinship terms with similar phonetic shapes and meanings, such as kaka MB, FZH, EF. It is argued that this distribution is consistent with the antiquity of this term in the language families in which it is found. Further, its pervasive presence in non-Pama-Nyungan (non-PNy) as well as in Pama-Nyun- gan (PNy) languages, is consistent with inheritance from a higher taxonomic lev- el, possibly Proto-Australian, and beyond, and even possibly from the proto-lan- guage spoken by the first modern men who colonized Sahul. Likewise, the as- sumed existence of Kariera-like terminologies in the higher nodes in the Aus- tralian language phylum is consistent with the claim that the Proto-Australian kinship system was Kariera-like. Abbreviations: P ‘parent,’ G ‘grand,’ M ‘mother,’ F ‘father,’ Z ‘sister,’ B ‘brother,’ U ‘uncle,’ A ‘aunt,’ E ‘spouse,’ e/y ‘elder/younger,’ W ‘wife,’ H ‘husband,’ C ‘child,’ S ‘son,’ D ‘daughter,’ Sib ‘sibling.’ Other relationships are obtained by combination of these primary symbols: MB ‘mother’s brother,’ FZ ‘father’s sister,’ etc.