Etymologies of kinship and social categories in Australian languages

What is it about?

McConvell, Patrick and Maïa Ponsonnet. 2018. Generic terms for subsections (‘skins’) in Australia: Sources and semantic networks, in McConvell P., Kelly P. and Lacrampe S. eds., Skins, kin and clan. The dynamics of social categories in Indigenous Australia, 271-315. Canberra: ANU EPress. Abstract This chapter examines the generic terms for subsections in Australia — that is, the general terms that are applied to them as an institution in various Aboriginal languages. These Aboriginal language terms are roughly parallel to ‘subsection’ in academic English or ‘skin’ in more vernacular and Aboriginal English. It will be argued that ‘skin’ is actually a loan translation from one of these Indigenous terms in one part of the country; however, generic terms have a variety of sources in different areas. The generic terms usually originate from words with different meanings, such as body parts or emanations like sweat and smell, and may also have been terms for other social categories, such as ‘totemic’ clans, before being applied to subsections. The polysemy of the generic term for ‘skin’ with these source meanings may continue in the current language. For example, in Dalabon, the term for subsection is malk, which also means ‘weather/season’.

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Why is it important?

This article contributes to the understanding of the semantic network around the pivotal notion of person in Australian languages.