Chapter 1. The Importance of the Concept of Paternity Abstract Father and mother, brother and sister do not constitute symmetrical couples in Indo-European. Unlike *māter ‘mother’, *pəter does not denote the physical parent, as is evidenced, for instance, by the ancient juxtaposition preserved in Latin Iupiter. Nor is *bhrāter ‘brother’ a term of consanguinity: Greek, in phrá̄tēr, preserves better than any other language the sense of “a member of a… Read more
Chapter 2. Status of the Mother and Matrilineal Descent Abstract Among other pointers to the non-existence of any legal status for the mother in Indo-European society, the absence of a word *mātrius as a counterpart to patrius may be cited. Nevertheless, the vocabulary, especially in Greek, preserves the memory of quite different social structures which are probably not Indo-European: the existence of a Zeus Hēraîos and of a conjugal couple… Read more
Chapter 3. The Principle of Exogamy and its Applications Abstract Only the custom of marriage between cross-cousins, which in its application means that the same person is my father’s father and the brother of my mother’s mother, enables us to understand that Latin avunculus, derived from avus ‘paternal grandfather’ signifies ‘maternal uncle’. Correlatively, nepos ‘nephew’ (indulged by his maternal uncle, but subjected to the strict patria potestas), beside this original… Read more
Chapter 4. The Indo-European Expression for “Marriage” [1] Abstract “Marriage” has no Indo-European term. In speaking of the man it is simply said—and this in expressions which have often been remodeled in particular languages—that he “leads” (home) a woman whom another man has “given” him (Lat. uxorem ducere and nuptum dare; in speaking of the woman, that she enters into the “married state,” receiving a… Read more
Chapter 5. Kinship Resulting from Marriage Abstract Except for the husband and wife, for whom no specific terms seem to have existed in Indo-European, the words in this field have a constant form and precise sense—but they are not amenable to analysis. They always designate the tie of kinship through a man—the husband’s mother and father, the husband’s brother, the husband’s sister, the brother’s wife and the husband’s brother’s wife. Read more
Chapter 6. Formation and Suffixation of the Terms for Kinship Abstract From the morphological point of view, the great unity of the Indo-European vocabulary of kinship emerges from the existence of the class suffix *-ter (or *-er), which not only characterizes a great number of the most ancient terms (*pǝter, etc.), but still continues to figure in the most recent creations or remodeled expressions. Even when they differ from one… Read more
Chapter 7. Words Derived from the Terms for Kinship Abstract Greek here offers a group of new designations—huiōnós ‘grandson’, páppos ‘grandfather’, adelphidoûs ‘nephew’—which, with adelphós supplanting phrátēr, are evidence for the passage from a system of classificatory kinship to a descriptive one. Latin has three adjectives derived from pater. Only one is Indo-European: this is patrius, which, in fact, goes back to *pǝter in its most ancient “classificatory” sense (patria… Read more
Book III: Social Status Chapter 1. Tripartition of Functions Abstract By parallel series of terms, often of revealing etymology, but which differ from language to language, Iranian, Indic, Greek and Italic testify to a common Indo-European heritage: that of an hierarchical society, structured according to three fundamental functions, those of priests, warriors and tillers of the soil. Text According to Indo-Iranian traditions society is organized into three classes of activity,… Read more
Chapter 2. The Four Divisions of Society Abstract The tripartition studied in Chapter One is of a functional character and it is by no means identical with the hierarchy of the groups to which a man belongs. These are political divisions that concern societies when studied over their whole extension. Here ancient Iranian has preserved four terms, designating respectively the “family,” the “clan,” the “tribe” and the “country.” But the… Read more
Chapter 3. The Free Man Abstract Although the opposition “free/slave” is common to all Indo-European peoples, a common designation of the notion of “liberty” is unknown. The fact that this designation evolved along parallel lines in two groups of languages merely serves to bring out better the specific content of the notion. In Latin and Greek the free man, *(e)leudheros, is positively defined by his membership of a “breed,” of… Read more
