Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/70

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58
KINSHIP AND

whom marriage is allowed is called kasoriegogoli. Li is the third person pronominal suffix, and we do not know the meaning of kasorie, but goga is the term used in Wagawaga and Wedau for the grandparents, its place being taken by the usual Melanesian term tubu in Tubetube. The term kasoriegogoli applied to marriageable relatives thus contains as one of its constituent elements a word which is probably the ancient term for grandparent in the island, since it is still used in this sense in the closely allied societies of the mainland.

We have thus a number of independent facts among the Massim, all of which would be the natural outcome of marriage between persons of alternate generations. To no one of them standing alone could much importance be attached, but taken in conjunction, they ought at least to suggest the possibility of such a marriage, a possibility which becomes the more probable when we consider that the Massim show clear evidence of the dual organisation of society with matrilineal descent which is associated with the granddaughter marriage of Pentecost and the Dieri of Australia. It adds to the weight of the evidence that indications of this peculiar form of marriage should be found among a people whose social organisation so closely resembles that in which the marriages between persons of alternate generations elsewhere occur.

I have no time for other examples. I hope to have shown that there are cases in which it is