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Studies in Semitic Kinship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

The material upon which this paper is based is in the first instance taken from the Relationship systems and customs of a Sudan Arab tribe (the Kababish) and of the Beni Amer, a Hamitic tribe whom I have been able to study myself in the Sudan by means of the genealogical method. Miss Moss kindly collected a list of relationship terms in Malta for me, which I have used. The rest of the material has been taken from dictionaries, and although I am fully aware of the inadequacy of material culled from dictionaries, yet in this case the method is inevitable. Full investigation into the relationship system and social organizations of the Amharic-speaking Abyssinians would be of the greatest value, and a complete examination of the Maltese terms would also be of interest. I have had much help from friends, though they are in no case responsible for my conclusions. Chief among these is Professor S. Langdon, who has given me much information. I am also indebted to Dr. Hall, Professor Zammit, Dr. Czermak, and Mr. S. H. Ray for references.

Type
Papers Contributed
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1923

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References

page 51 note 1 “The Kababish: A Sudan Arab tribe”: Harvard African Studies. Varia. Africana, vol. ii, 1918.Google Scholar

page 51 note 2 “The classificatory system groups together various relationships which we distinguish, while others which we group together are separated. The simplest way to understand its essential characters is to recognize that the classificatory system is founded on the clan or other similar social group, while our system is founded on the family. All members of the speaker's clan who are of the same generation as himself stand to him in the same relation as his own brothers and sisters; all members of his father's clan of the preceding generation stand in the same relation to himself as the father or the father's sister; all of the generation before receive the same designation as his grandfather. Similarly, all those of the mother's clan and of her generation are classed with the mother and the mother's brother; all those of a wife's clan and of her generation stand in the same relation as her actual brothers and sisters, while all of the preceding generation are classed with her parents. This application of terms of relationship to wide groups of relatives may persist after the clan-organization has disappeared, and the exact way in which the terms are applied varies greatly with the nature of the social organization, so that the system often preserves evidence of social conditions which are no longer present.” —Notes and Queries on Anthropology, 1912, pp. 149, 150.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 Yiba was always said in answer to the question, “What do you call ‘so-so’”, when the person named was informant's father, it is, therefore, probably a vocative.

page 53 note 2 I am indebted to J. Leveen for this information.

page 53 note 3 I am not clear whether Semitic scholars consider abstract nouns as originally and essentially feminine, or that as the abstract ending is the same as the feminine ending, the two forms have been confused.

page 54 note 1 It must be borne in mind that the classificatory system of relationship is not in itself evidence for group-marriage, and no further significance is attached to it than is indicated in the footnote on p. 51.

page 54 note 2 Meinhof, Carl, An Introduction to the Study of African Languages, translated by A. Werner, p. 149.Google Scholar

page 54 note 3 Broken plurals are treated as feminine singular, the adjectives and verbs agreeing with a broken plural noun take the feminine singular endings. The numerals 3–10 have feminine endings when applied to masculine nouns, and the masculine endings when applied to feminine nouns. The following is an extract from a letter Professor Langdon was kind enough to write me on the subject. “It is customary in Semitic to use the numerals 3–10 before masculine plurals in the feminine. This is probably due to the fact that a group of three or more was at first regarded as a collective or an abstract idea. Three men was regarded as threeness of men, hence the numeral 3 was written with the abstract ending atu or a in Hebrew, usually in the construct at, eth. Naturally this syntax arose with masculine plurals first. When they wished to use these numerals before feminine plurals nothing remained for them to do but to differentiate by dropping the abstract ending of the numerals. This abstract ending at is identical with the feminine ending, and consequently it looks as though they employ feminine numerals before masculine plurals and masculine plurals before feminine plurals.” I quote it with full acknowledgment and thanks, and feel that it is almost ungracious to point out that the word “naturally” betrays an attitude of mind philological rather than anthropological. I cannot understand why this syntax arose first with masculine nouns, and fail to see why it should be a natural development of a language when still in a comparatively primitive form.

page 55 note 1 Meinhof, Carl, Sprachen der Hamiten, Hamburg, 1912, p. 227, footnote 1.Google Scholar

page 57 note 1 Dr. Zammit does not believe this to be the case; he considers that missier is derived from a Maltese verb sarisir, to, become, ripen. In favour of the antiquity of messier in Maltese, he states that “Our Father which art in Heaven” is translated messierna, and he asserts that ab does not occur at all in Maltese. In personal names, such as Bu-Hagar, one might see an abbreviation of abu, and this is the view of some scholars. Words such as busuf, a hairy beetle, butwila, a very tal I man, are common and are analogous to a common use of ab in Arabic.

page 57 note 2 Varia Africana, op. cit., p. 138.Google Scholar

page 57 note 3 Doughty, C. M., Travels in Arabia Deserta, 1888, vol. ii, p. 29.Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 Smith, Robertson, Kinship and Marriage, London, 1903, p. 72.Google Scholar

page 58 note 2 Wellhausen, J., Göttinsche Nachrichten, 1893, p. 480.Google Scholar

page 58 note 3 Winckler, Hugo, Arabish-Semitisch-Orientalisch: Mitt. der Vorderas Gesellsch, 190–4, p. 15.Google Scholar

“The two main differences in relationship which the Semitic languages know are am and ham, the former indicates in later [times] the father's brother, the latter relatives acquired through marriage. As the former also means ‘das volk’, it is clear that this is the original meaning of the word, the members of the ‘gens’ who, because of their blood relationship, belong together as brothers and do not marry within themselves.”

page 58 note 4 Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Art. Amm.

page 59 note 1 Grey, Buchanan, Studies in Hebrew Proper Names, p. 54.Google Scholar

page 59 note 2 Grey, Buchanan, Encyclopædia BiblicaGoogle Scholar, Art. Ammi., and Studies in Hebrew Proper Names, p. 42 et seq.Google Scholar

page 60 note 1 For further discussion of Robertson Smith's hypothesis see Studies in Semitic Kinship, 11, Cousin Marriage.

page 60 note 2 Brown, Driver, & Briggs.

page 60 note 3 Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticorum, iv, 376.Google Scholar

page 60 note 4 Annbruater, C. H., Initia Amharica, Cambridge, 1910.Google Scholar

page 61 note 1 I am indebted to Professor Langdon for this information.

page 61 note 2 I am indebted to Dr. Alan Gardiner for the information that the Coptic word shom, also found once in the eighteenth dynasty, may be an equivalent of the same word. If this is so, it suggests that the word is common to both the Hamitic and Semitic groups. Its presence in Tebdawi alone would not be conclusive, as it might be a borrowed word.

page 62 note 1 Professor Langdon tells me it is not found in Babylonian, and Mr. H. Lowe has kindly looked in several Hebrew lexicons, and has been unable to find the root.

page 63 note 1 In late Hebrew and Aramaic, husband's and wife's father: Brown, Driver, & Briggs, Hebrew Lexicon.

page 63 note 2 Articles “Circumcision”, “Introductory”, “Muslim and Semitic”: Encyclopœdia of Religion and Ethics. In these three articles varying views are held on the subject.

page 63 note 3 Seligman, C. G., “Some Aspects of the Hamitic problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan”: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. xliii, 1913.Google Scholar

page 64 note 1 In Sumerian there are five recognized signs for father-in-law and a sixth, ushhar, which is dependent on a gloss. The sign for father-in-law is equated with that for the bânû, the highly worthy “mage”. Meissner, Bruno, “Das Ideogramm für den SchwiegervaterOrientalistischer Litteratur Zeitung, vol. x, 1907, p. 90.Google Scholar

page 64 note 2 For a fuller discussion of this subject see “Cousin Marriage”, Studies, etc., II.

page 66 note 1 For further discussion see “Cousin Marriage”.

page 67 note 1 h.m., however, does not occur in Maltese.

page 67 note 2 The Maltese relationship terms have obviously gone through much change. Barbα is used for mother's brother; this is a Lombardy word for uncle. The father's brother is called 'amm.

page 67 note 3 Kinship and Social Organization, p. 78Google Scholar et seq.

page 67 note 4 I am not certain whether this term should be retained. I hope to be in a better position to judge when I have worked out the material I have on the Nilotic systems. Unfortunately, I never discussed this point with Rivers, although he read the first draft of this paper and gave me great encouragement to finish and publish it, agreeing as far as I can remember, with all my main points.