The Retention, Shift, and Extinction of Kinship Greetings Based on The Line of Descent

Abstract

Kinship greeting becomes a sign of culture, tribe, and race of a family. The greeting word used to call or greet someone, some of them survive, shift, or extinct because of various problems and environments. This condition encourages the implementation of analysis about the retention, shift, and extinction of kinship greetings seen from the line of descent in the society of Siak Malay. The method used to collect the data was in the form of an interview. The activity was conducted towards one of the Malay families who were born and stayed in Siak. The analysis and data discussion was by describing the form of kinship greetings based on the line of descent. The analysis results find out that there is a greeting word that does not show the identity of culture, tribe, and race of a family, such as Oom, Gan, and Lok. Meanwhile, there is also a shift of greeting words caused by the grandmother, such as To Odang, To Udo, and To Ocu. Besides, on the line of the grandfather, there are greeting words like Pak/Mak Tuo (first child), Ongah (second child), Udo (the third child), Pak/Mak Ocu/Oncu (the fourth child and so on). Then, the descent of son greets the brother of their father with greeting word Apak. These data show that there are still efforts of a family to maintain the form of the greetings. The extinction causes the

loss of culture trait, tribe, and race of a family.