|
Post by Admin on Feb 22, 2024 21:17:01 GMT
Friedrich hastens to assure us, however, that these connections "in no wise demonstrate matriliny or matriarchy" because "the recognition of maternity is a cultural universal'' and because the emotional tie between mother and son is "often the most dominant emotionally in patrilineal and patriarchal systems". In other words, the absence of a term denoting male offspring exclusively is merely additional evidence of the patriarchal society presupposed to exist in PIE antiquity-even as, for Szemen!nyi, the two terms signifying 'son' and 'sister,' though derived from the same root, connote the relative importance of the former and the unimportance of the latter. 'Daughter', incidentally, has been analyzed as derived from a verbal root meaning 'to milk' (hence the daughter was 'a milkmaid') and more recently by Szemen!nyi as denoting "the person who prepares a meal" (22). Nowhere has it been suggested that the association of an individual with milk might represent another important maternal function-at least in conjunction with 'daughter'; rather, importance has been assigned to the recipient of the milk, the son. In similar fashion, *bhriiter and *swesor, though generally agreed (by Friedrich (1966), Benveniste (1973), and Szemerenyi (1977), for example) to have functioned as classificatory terms before having been adapted to consanguineal significations, are analyzed so as to assign greater importance to male offspring. However each term is segmented, *bhriiter is said to have occupied a place of central importance in the extended social group, while *swesor existed on the periphery, gaining importance from the group. And her relative insignificance is said to rest on the fact, rather than despite the fact, that *swesor is etymologically derived from *swe, the term for the social group, "one's own blood". Evidence for IE patriarchy based on consanguineal kinship terminology therefore rests chiefly on the six primary terms discussed. The Latin term for the maternal uncle, avunculus, appears to be derived from avus, the Latin reflex of a common term meaning 'grandfather', while Latin nepos has the double sense 'nephew' and 'grandson'. The double sense of nepos is paralleled in other languages: its cognates denote only 'grandson' in Indo-Iranian, only 'nephew' in Western languages other than Latin. Moreover, evidence gathered from Latin inscriptions and literature suggests that corresponding Celtic words also referred to the sister's son alone (Benveniste 1973: 188-89): A study . . . of the sense of nepos in the Latin inscriptions in Brittany has shown that it always refers to the sister's son; nepos therefore has the same sense as in the corresponding Celtic word nia in Irish and nei in Welsh, which designated the sister's son, while the brother's son in Irish is called mac brather, a descriptive term. Aside from this, there are in Celtic legends traces of a uterine kinship; in the Ogamic inscriptions, filiation is established through the mother. . . . What are we to make of the classical use of nepos? Szemerenyi (1977) provides an ingenious analysis which overturns not only the hypothesis that IE kinship might be characterized as Omaha (advanced by Gates (1971), Friedrich (1966), and Wordick (1975)), but also any evidence for matriliny. He claims that, within the extended paternal family, a nephew had a need to distinguish maternal uncles from paternal uncles, because he would treat them differently, but would have similar "pleasant relationships, on the one hand, as grandson, towards grandfather, on the other, as nephew, towards his maternal uncle" (190). Moreover, patrilineal succession (which, as Szemerenyi later (191) admits, he cannot document clearly) determines the connection between the maternal uncle and the grandfather: In our view ... the (eldest) maternal uncle came to be identified with grandfather as a result of the not uncommon situation that, on the demise of his father (EGO's grandfather), he inherited his father's position. The consequence was that his name (*HauHosl*awos) acquired the secondary sense 'grandfather', and not the other way around.
|
|