Monday, June 1, 2026

Detail #443: Doubly anchored kinship terms

 Some languages have compounds of e.g. "father" and "son" that express a group consisting of a father and a son. However, one could imagine a situation where a noun in fact conveys a single person (or multiple persons), characterized by their separate relationships to the speaker and the addressee or to some other referents.

Let's consider three generations, from oldest to younger: Anna, Beata and Cecilia.

Anna is mother and grandmother to Beata and Cecilia. Beata is daughter to Anna, and mother to Cecilia. Cecilia is daughter to Beata and granddaughter to Anna. 

Let us now imagine there being a word each of these can use when talking to the other to express both persons' relationships to the third. A simple compound could do the trick - grandchild-child, daughter-mother. This might sound a bit weird, but on the other hand, let's consider a different relation: grandchild-niece (Beata's sister Diana's daughter Emilia).

Of course, one could also consider how the relation to whom is marked - is it just 'our grandchild-niece' or is it "grandchild-mine-niece-yours"? If the simpler approach, does the grammar force some certain order? The oldest generation first? Some particular closeness first? Higher status first?

Maybe some of these words even have specialized lexemes that are not portmanteaus or compounds, but indivisible stems - that perchance are doubly possessed in a particular order?

And maybe it goes beyond relatives, and includes certain kinds of other formalized relations - spouses, in-laws, but also perhaps sworn allies of some kind, and as society progresses even colleagues?

 


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