Apalai (Cariban) Kinship Terminology: A Descriptive, Comparative, and Typological Perspective

The goal of the present paper is twofold: First, it presents a description of the kinship terminology of Apalai, a Cariban language of the Amazon, based on primary field data. Morphological and syntactic constructional patterns, including suppletion, as well as patterns of semantic colexification and morphophonological alternations are discussed. Second, it offers observations of a comparative nature with other Cariban kinship terminology systems. I seek here to foreground certain family-wide patterns, to raise and to some extent support diachronic hypotheses, to improve upon existing areal characterizations of kinship terminology systems in the Guianas region, and to locate the Apalai terminological system in relation to broader typologies.