Kinship

Marriage

The verb for the life-bonding of two people is ju’iduku YiE$w to marry. This is intended to be eternal, but can be broken if requested by either partner. It is not an exclusive arrangement, and one can be involved in concurrent marriages.

A bonded person is called a silu SW spouse when using possessive pronouns, and xalli x;L married person otherwise.

Nuclear Family

The words kitisu KTz father and julliga Y;Lg mother usually refer to biological parents, but can be applied to the main guardians if the biological parents are not around. These are used without possessives other than -qa q gengenitive, the inalienable genitive marker. The following table shows the possessive forms:

There are two terms for children: tu e offspring for postnatal children, ’appu a;o foetus for antenatal. Both of these are gender-neutral, and are most often used with possessives.

There can be a suffixed ju’i Yi link for spouses’ offspring and parents’ spouses.

Other kinship terms began as nuclear family names, but were thence extended across a generation. So kaqqa k;q elder sibling and kica Kc younger sibling can also be applied to cousins.