Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T19:24:53.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The use of Portuguese relationship terms in Kalapalo (Xingu Carib) encounters: changes in a central Brazilian communications network1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Ellen B. Basso
Ellen B. Basso
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The introduction of Portuguese relationship terms into a system used by the Carib-speaking Kalapalo is explained in terms of internal social developments rather than language contact or acculturation. Upper Xingu Society is described as a linguistically diverse communications network that operates within two types of situations: ‘personal’ situations which emphasize verbal codes and focus on individual relationships and roles, and ‘non-personal’ situations which emphasize non-verbal ritualized performance in an intervillage context, focusing on local group identity rather than the qualities of individual ‘persons’. The adoption of Portuguese terms represents an elaboration of the system by which certain kinds of male relatives are designated as ‘persons’, and in the context of interaction between men speaking mutually unintelligible languages has circumvented the problem of language loyalty for intervillage communication. (Lexical borrowing, language loyalty, relationship terms, South American languages.)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1973 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Basso, E. B. (1970). Xingu Carib kinship terminology and marriage: another view. SJA 26. 402–17.Google Scholar
Basso, E. B. (1973). The Kalapalo Indians of Central Brazil. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Becker, E. R. (1969). Xingu society. (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.) Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Bruner, E. M. (1955). Two processes of change in Mandan-Hidatsa kinship terminology. AmA 57. 840–50.Google Scholar
Dole, G. E. (1956–1957). La cultura de los Indios Kuikurus del Brasil Central. II – La organizacion social. Runa 8, Pt. 2; 185–202.Google Scholar
Dole, G. E. (1969). Generation kinship nomenclature as an adaptation to endogamy. SJA 25. 105–23.Google Scholar
Eggan, F. (1937). Historical changes in the Choctaw kinship system. AmA 39. 34–52.Google Scholar
Eggan, F. (1950). Social organization of the Western Pueblos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Freed, S. A. (1960) Changing Washo kinship. (Anthropological Records 14. (6).) Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Friedrich, P. (1963). An evolutionary sketch of Russian kinship. In Edmundson, V. G. and Chafe, W. L. (eds.) Symposium on Language and Culture (Proceedings of the 1962 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society.) Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1–26.Google Scholar
Friedrich, P. (1967). The linguistic reflex of social change: From Tsarist to Soviet Russian kinship. In Lieberson, S. (ed.) Explorations insociolinguistics. (IJAL 33 (4) Pt. II). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 31–57.Google Scholar
Galvão, E. (1953). Cultura e sistema de parentesco das tribos do Alto Xingu. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, n.s. Antropologia, no. 8.Google Scholar
Gough, K. (1952). Changing kinship usage in the setting of political and economic change among the Nayars of Malabar. JRAI 72. 71–88.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. (1968). The speech community. In International encyclopedia of the social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. 381–6.Google Scholar
Hallowell, A. I. (1928). Recent changes in the kinship terminology of the St. Francis Abenaki. Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Americanists, Rome 2. 97–145.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. (1950). The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Lg. 26. 210–31.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. (1964a). Introduction: Toward ethnographies of communication. In Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D. (eds.) The ethnography of communication. (AmA 66 (6) pt. 2). Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. 1–34.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. (1964b). Introduction to section on processes and patterns of change. In Hymes, D. (ed.) Language in culture and society. New York: Harper and Row. 449–54.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. (1968). Linguistic problems in defining the concept of the ‘tribe’. In Helm, J. (ed.) Essays on the problem of tribe. (Proceedings of the 1967 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society.) Seattle: University of Washington. 83–101.Google Scholar
Jackson, J. (1971). Language, marriage and the tribe: The Bara of the Vaupes, Columbia. (Unpublished ms. in Department of Anthropology) Stanford: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Leslau, W. (1952). The influence of Sidamo on the Ethiopic languages of Gurage. Lg.28. 63–82.Google Scholar
Meyer, H. (1897). Im Quellgebiet des Schingu. Landschafts- und volkerbilder aus Centralbrasilien. In Verhandlungen gesellschaft Deutscher naturforscher und artze 69. 135–45.Google Scholar
Nett, B. R. (1952). Historical changes in the Osage kinship system. SJA 8. 164–81.Google Scholar
Schmitt, K. and Schmitt, I. O. (n.d.). Witchita kinship: past and present. (Unpublished ms. cited in S. Freed).Google Scholar
Schneider, D. M. (1967). Kinship and culture: descent and filiation as cultural constructs. SJA 23. 65–73.Google Scholar
Schneider, D. M. (1968). American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Englewood, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Schneider, D. M. and Roberts, J. M. (1956). Zuni kinship terms. Laboratory of Anthropology Notebook No. 3, Monograph I. University of Nebraska.Google Scholar
Sorensen, A. P. Jr. (1967). Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon. AmA 69. 670–84.Google Scholar
Spicer, E. H. (1940). Pascua, A Yaqui village in Arizona. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Spicer, E. H. (1943). Linguistic aspects of Yaqui acculturation. AmA 45. 410–26.Google Scholar
Spoehr, A. (1947). Changing kinship systems. Field Museum of Natural History Publications. Anthropological Series 33 (4). 151–235.Google Scholar
Steinen, K. von den (1886). Durch Zentral-Brasilien. Leipzig.Google Scholar
Steinen, K. von den (1894). Unter den naturvolkern Zentral-Brasiliens. Berlin.Google Scholar
Troike, R. C. (1968). Evidence for change in the Tonkawa kinship system. Verhandlungen des XXXVIII International Amerikanistenkongress, Stuttgart-Munchen. Band 11. 319–25.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.Google Scholar