The focus of this chapter is the system of kin classification of the Pitjantjara dialect of the Western Desert language family. In this system cross cousins, as well as parallel cousins, are classified as ‘siblings’; father's parallel and cross cousins are classified as ‘father’ and ‘father's sister’; and mother's parallel and cross cousins are classified as ‘mother’ and ‘mother's brother’. Although systems with this feature are not uncommon in Australia, especially in the Western Desert, they have received relatively little analytic attention from anthropologists other than Elkin, who calls them “Aluridja–type” systems, and who has noted some of the similarities between them and the “Hawaiian–type” systems of Oceania (cf. Elkin 1939: 214–5).

The data analyzed here were collected by Nancy Munn at Areyonga settlement in the Northern Territory in 1964–65 and concern the Pitjantjara dialect spoken in and around the Peterman Range (Munn 1965). Additional information on the Pitjantjara system of kin classification has been recorded by Elkin (1939, 1940), Love (Ms.), and Soravia (1969). Annette Hamilton provided some important unpublished data on the Pitjantjara spoken at Everard Park station in South Australia.

THE PITJANTJARA SYSTEM

Munn's data (1965: 7–9) are presented in Table 3.1. Unfortunately the sources on the Pitjantjara dialect provide little information on the lexical means whereby structurally primary and nonprimary denotata may be distinguished, but an apparently relevant bit of data on these means is reported by Glass and Hackett (1970: 63) for the Nangatatjara dialect.