10 - Ngarinyin

Summary

The focus of this chapter is the system of kin classification of the Ngarinyin language of the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. Elkin (1932: 312–3) describes this system as Aranda–like – because “descent is reckoned through four lines, marriage with cross cousins is prohibited, and the type–marriage is of the second–cousin variety” – but he notes that it differs from “other systems of the Aranda type” in at least two ways. First, in Aranda–like systems ego's kin of his MF's, FMB's, and MMB's descent lines are terminologically identified with one another in alternate generations, but in the Ngarinyin system “the general principle is that all the males of any one local horde are classified together under one term, and so too are their sisters. That is, a man and his brothers, his and their children, and so on, are classified together irrespective of generation levels.” The second difference has to do with the “varieties of second–cousin marriage which are possible.” In “the ordinary Aranda system” there are four types of second cousin whom a man may marry – MMBDD, MFZDD, FFZSD, FMBSD – and typically all such kinswomen are designated by the same term as FM and wSC or, alternatively, by special potential spouse and potential sibling–in–law terms. But in the Ngarinyin system only one of these four kintypes belongs to the class of marriageable kinswomen; this is FMBSD who, here too, is designated as ‘father's mother’.