Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T14:18:27.482Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Brag-bar kinship system in synchronic and diachronic perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2020

Zhang Shuya*
Affiliation:
INALCO-CRLAO
Fan Jingming*
Affiliation:
Université Paris-Nanterre

Abstract

The Rgyalrong languages are a group of unwritten non-Tibetic languages spoken in north-western Sichuan Province, China. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the Brag-bar (a dialect of Situ Rgyalrong) kinship terminology at the synchronic level, and then by using both internal reconstruction and comparative method, we attempt to explain the directionality of both formal and semantic changes in the Brag-bar terminology. Thus we demonstrate that the present kinship system of Brag-bar (Situ) originates from a system with Omaha skewing.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to express our gratitude to Guillaume Jacques, who has read every version of this paper and provided valuable suggestions. We would also like to thank Lai Yunfan, Philippe Ramirez, Stephen Morey, Jesse Gates, Gong Xun and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Finally, we would like to thank Thomas Pellard, who generously shared the LaTeX codes for the kinship diagrams.

References

Allen, N.J. 1976. “Sherpa kinship terminology in diachronic perspective”, Man, New Series 11/4, 569–87.Google Scholar
Baxter, William and Sagart, Laurent. 2014. Old Chinese: A New Construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benedict, Paul K. 1942. “Tibetan and Chinese kinship terms”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6/3–4, 313–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davids, Irene Maria Hendrina and van Driem, George. 1985. “Limbu kinship terminology: a description”, Himalayan Languages XII, 115–56.Google Scholar
Gates, Jesse P. 2014. Situ in Situ: Towards a Dialectology of Jiāróng (Rgyalrong). Munich: LINCOM.Google Scholar
Ghasarian, Christian. 1996. Introduction à l’étude de la parenté. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1975. “Preliminary notes on marriage and kinship”, Contributions to Nepalese Studies 2, 5769.Google Scholar
Gong, Xun. 2018. Le Rgyalrong Zbu, une langue tibéto-birmane de Chine du sud-ouest: une étude descriptive, typologique et comparative, Doctoral dissertation, Institut National des langues et des civilisations orientales.Google Scholar
Hu, Shiyun 胡士云. 2007. Hanyu qinshu chengwei yanjiu 汉语亲属称谓研究 (Studies on the Chinese kin terms). Beijing: 商务印书馆 (Commercial Press).Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2004. Phonologie et morphologie du japhug (rgyalrong)”, Doctoral dissertation, Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot, Paris.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2006. “Essai de comparaison des rimes du Tangoute et du Rgyalrong”, in Beckwith, C.I. (ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages, vol. II, 121–52.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume 向柏霖. 2008. Jiarongyu yanjiu 嘉绒语研究 (Research on the Rgyalrong Language). Beijing: Nationalities Press.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2012a. “From denominal derivation to incorporation”, Lingua 122, 1207–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2012b. “The Tangut kinship system in Qiangic perspective”, in Hill, Nathan W. (ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages, 211–56. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2016. Esquisse de phonologie et de morphologie historique du Tangoute. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume and Michaud, Alexis. 2011. “Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages: Naxi, Na and Laze”, Diachronica 28/4, 468–98.Google Scholar
Kaplanian, Patrick. 2015. La terminologie de parenté au Ladakh (Leh)”, Études Mongoles et Sibériennes, Centrasiatiques et Tibétaines 46, 126.Google Scholar
Kroeber, A.L. 1909. “Classificatory systems of relationship”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 39, 7784.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lai, Yunfan. 2017. Grammaire du Khroskyabs de Wobzi, Doctoral dissertation, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3.Google Scholar
Lai, Yunfan, Jacques, Guillaume, Gong, Xun and Gates, Jesse. Manuscript. “Tangut as a West Rgyalrongic language”.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Lin, Youjing. 2012. “By no means marginal: privative tone in Zhuokeji Rgyalrong”, Language and Linguistics 13/4, 625–62.Google Scholar
Lin, Youjing 林幼菁. 2016. Jiarongyu Zhuokejihua yufa biaozhu wenben 嘉戎语卓克基话语法标注文本 (Glossed texts of the Zhuokeji Rgyalrong). 社会科学文献出版社 (Social Sciences Academic Press).Google Scholar
Lounsbury, Floyd G. 1964. “A formal account of the Crow-Omaha-Type kinship terminologies”, in Goodenough, Ward H. (ed.), Exploration in Culture Anthropology, 351–93. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Morgan, L.H. 1871. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Murdock, George Peter. 1970. “Kin term patterns and their distribution”, Ethnology 9/2, 165208.Google Scholar
Nagano, Sadako. 1994. “A note on the Tibetan kin terms khu and zhang”, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 17/2, 103–15.Google Scholar
Prins, Marielle. 2016. A Grammar of rGyalrong Jiǎomùzú (Kyom-kyo) Dialects. Leiden: Universiteit Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuessler, Axel. 2007. ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Sun, Jackson T.-S. 1998. “Nominal morphology in Caodeng rGyalrong”, Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 69, 103–49.Google Scholar
Sun, Jackson T.-S. 2000a. “Parallelism in verb morphology of Sidaba Rgyalrong and Lavrung in Rgyarongic”, Language and Linguistics 1/1, 161–90.Google Scholar
Sun, Jackson T.-S. 2000b. “Stem alternations in Puxi verb inflections: toward validating the rGyalrong subgroup in Qiangic”, Language and Linguistics 1/2, 211–32.Google Scholar
Trautmann, R. Thomas and Whiteley, M. Peter. 2012a. “A classic problem”, in Thomas Trautmann, R. and Peter Whiteley, M. (eds), Crow-Omaha: New Light on a Classic Problem of Kinship Analysis, 127. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Trautmann, R. Thomas and Whiteley, M. Peter (eds). 2012b. Crow-Omaha: New Light on a Classic Problem of Kinship Analysis. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Tingyu. 2012. “The house, the state and change: the modernity of Sichuan rGyalrong Tibetans”, in Wilkerson, James and Parkin, Robert (eds), Modalities of Change: The Interface of Tradition and Modernity in East Asia, 2136. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Wang, Tingyu 王廷宇. 2016. 自西向東: 從 Sherpa人與嘉絨人的比較來反思喜馬拉雅藏區的社會組織與親屬研究 (From West to East: Re-thinking Social Organization and Kinship studies in the Tibetan Himalayas through a Comparison between Sherpas and rGyalrongs). 臺灣人類學刊 (Taiwan Journal of Anthropology) 14/2, 95144.Google Scholar
Wu, Qi. 2013. “Tradition and modernity: cultural continuum and transition among Tibetans in Amdo”, Doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Xu, Xijian 徐悉艰, Xiao肖家成, Jiacheng, Yue岳相昆, Xiangkun and Dai戴庆厦, Qingxia. 1983. 景汉词典 (Jinghpo–Chinese Dictionary). 云南民族出版社 (Yunnan Nationalities Publishing House).Google Scholar
Zhang, Shuya. 2018. “Stem alternations in the Brag-bar dialect of Situ Rgyalrong”, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 41/2, 294330.Google Scholar