Becoming Your Own Grandparent: Terms for Great-grandchildren in Caquinte

When I began learning Caquinte kin terms years ago, I was surprised at one moment to be told that the word for 'great-granddaughter' was nibatyageo, which I knew to mean 'niece,' or 'daughter-in-law' (more on this polysemy below). This post is about the system behind this use of this term and related ones, which I only learned about in depth in Kitepampani in July of last year. As has become usual, the information here is due to the inimitable Antonina Salazar Torres, who explained it to me. Throughout the post, the terms I cite are vocative ones, which sometimes, depending on the term in question, include a first-person possessive prefix n(o)- (as above).

For background, Caquintes practice a form of cross-cousin marriage that has consequences for the terms used to address and refer to consanguines (relatives related by blood) and affines (in-laws). Cross-cousins are what many people know as one half of their first cousins, the children of your parents' opposite-sex siblings: that is, your mother's brother's children, or your father's sister's children. These individuals are one's preferred marriage partner(s), especially, for a man, the daughter(s) of his mother's brother. This means, if you're a man, that your female cross-cousins are marriageable, and that your male cross-cousins become your brothers-in-law. For a man, the word for male cross-cousin is the same as brother-in-law, maternal uncle is the same as father-in-law, paternal aunt is the same as mother-in-law, etc. For a woman, the word for female cross-cousin is the same as sister-in-law, etc. In contrast to cross-cousins, parallel cousins are the children of your parents' same-sex siblings; these individuals you address and refer to with the same terms as full (and half-) siblings, and to marry them would be incestuous. This ramifies across generations, with the effect, for example, that a man's search for a wife (or wives, who are usually sisters to each other) with his maternal uncle might, through a Western lens, involve his going to his mother's male parallel cousins; they are her brothers, in this system. Finally, as a result of all of this, one addresses one's maternal aunt as mother, and one's paternal uncle as father. (There is an additional unique term for maternal aunt, niochoji.) To clarify these 'classificatory' relationships, a suffix -tsori may be added; "true" instances of particular relationships are clarified by -majaka.

There are distinct terms based on the gender of the ego, the person through whom a relationship is calculated. A man's brother, for example, is igentijegi, but a woman's brother is jaaji. (Similarly, a man's sister is tsioji, but a woman's is igetyo. There are no age-grade distinctions.) In combination with the cross-cousin marriage practice, this produces an additional set of (partial) distinctions in the generation below ego. The children of a man's brother(s) are sons and daughters; those of his sister(s) are notinerijaniki (men) and ñañioki (women) -- nephews and sons-in-law, and nieces and daughters-in-law, respectively. The children of a woman's sister(s) are similarly sons and daughters; those of her brother(s) are notinerijaniki, as for a male ego, but nibatyageo, for women, the first term encountered above. Beyond this, terms for grandparents and grandchildren are not sensitive to ego or other intermediate relationships: tyai and tyao for grandfather and grandmother, respectively; noshai and noshao for grandson and granddaughter.

Once we arrive at three generations below ego, two competing systems for classifying kin become salient. The more straightforward one simply folds back on itself, treating great-grandchildren as if they were children, thus irijani 'son, great-grandson' and orijani 'daughter, great-granddaughter.' The competing system transposes, in a way that remains sensitive to ego: a man addresses and refers to his son as aapani "father, paternal uncle" and to his daughter as airontsi "paternal aunt, mother-in-law"; a woman addresses and refers to her daughter as iinani "mother, maternal aunt" and to her son as koonkini "maternal uncle, father-in-law." Ego becomes their own grandparent, with the effect that address and reference to kin one generation lower is achieved with terms from one generation higher.

Competing Terms for Consanguines below Male Ego (right of slash is non-standard)

From here things ramify downwards. For a man, his grandson through his son is igentijegi "brother," because that son is now aapani "father"; his grandson through his daughter, however, is anianishi "brother-in-law," because that daughter is now airontsi "paternal aunt." The great-grandchildren through these grandsons are consequently treated differently: those through the former have no term except the standard "son" and "daughter" terms (indicated by "___" in the figure above); those through the latter, in contrast, can be addressed or referred to as notinerijaniki "son-in-law" and ñañioki "daughter-in-law." The inverse is true for the other half of a man's great-grandchildren: those through his son's daughter (tsioji "sister") are "son-in-law" and "daughter-in-law"; those through his daughter's daughter (nomankigaretsori "classificatory spouse") are "son" and "daughter."

Competing Terms for Consanguines below Female Ego (right of slash is non-standard)

For a woman, her granddaughter through her daughter is igetyo "sister," because that daughter is now iinani "mother"; her granddaughter through her son, however, is atoto "sister-in-law," because that son is now koonkini "maternal uncle." The great-grandchildren through these granddaughters are consequently treated differently, in a way analogous to that for a male ego that I leave the reader to explore on their own in the preceding figure. Of note to the opening of this post, however, is that the daughter of a woman's daughter's son (jaaji "brother") becomes nibatyageo "daughter-in-law." And the system is reciprocal; nibatyageo addresses and refers to ego as airontsi "paternal aunt."

When exactly one uses one term versus another (when there are competing terms) remains unclear to me. Antonina described it as, Nobaesatiniteni itsakero ishao ogetyote; ishao otsipa, irashi irorijanite, atoto ('My ancestors, they knew their granddaughter was their sister; their other granddaughter, their daughter's, sister-in-law'). It's also not clear to me at which generations the competing system was used; Antonina's explanation suggests that the competing system is a way of understanding grandchildren, but I'm not sure if people refer to their children as "mother," "maternal uncle," etc. In her explanation, the competing system is perhaps increasingly the practice of an older generation. Finally, I'm not sure whether similar systems are present in ethnolinguistically related groups; relatively large dictionaries of Nomatsigenga (Shaver 1996), Ashaninka (Kindberg 1980), Asheninka (Payne 1980; multidialectal), and Matsigenka (Snell 2011) do not show any entries for great-grandparents or great-grandchildren that could provide clues as to competing systems.