Variation in Matukar Panau kinship terminology

Abstract

Referential kinship terms in Matukar Panau (Oceanic, Papua New Guinea) are obligatorily possessed. Traditionally, kinship terms are directly possessed in Oceanic languages (with an obligatory suffix on the root that agrees with the person and number of the possessor). In Matukar Panau, some kinship terms are also indirectly possessed (with a classifier that agrees with the person and number of the possessor). A third pattern shows double-marking of possessors with directly possessed terms co-occurring with a classifier. I present a multivariate analysis of the predictors that influence the choice of the direct, indirect or double-marked patterns. Older women and younger men are most likely to use the indirect pattern, particularly when discussing their own kin from their households, especially in conversational situations. The indirect possession pattern, then, is used for more integral relationships, what has previously been the semantic domain of direct possession in Oceanic.

Directional constructions in Matukar Panau

“…In sociolinguistic studies gender is often found to condition variation, though this seems to be less significant in the case of morphosyntactic variation (Meyerhoff, 2013). However, in Barth's (2019) study of the variation in the Matukar Panau kinship possession system, gender was found to be significant in driving the changes to the system. It is possible that the choice of a certain construction signals some social meaning.…”

“…Speaker age was also found to be significant in Barth's (2019) study of the variation in kinship possession strategies, with younger women and older men found to be driving the shift to indirect possession strategies. We therefore investigate whether the same pattern holds for the variation in directional constructions.…”

“…Many people speak the Papuan languages Bargam and Waskia, which are spoken in nearby areas, as well as the closely related Austronesian language Takia. In total, speakers in the Matukar Panau corpus (Barth, 2010) speak a total of around 20 different languages, many of which are under described.…”

“…The data used in this study comes from a corpus of 86 spoken texts from Matukar Panau (Barth, 2010) collected between 2010 and 2020. The data is transcribed in ELAN and translated into Tok Pisin and English.…”

“…Different text genres naturally affect lexical and grammatical choices as the context necessitates. For example, in Matukar Panau, Barth (2019) found that the choice of kinship possession term was influenced by text type, with less formal situations associated with less direct possession patterns. We might expect speaker motivation to affect directional choice and the discourse context to interact with the types of verbs that are used.…”