This is the stuff I got fed up with. Just dull,
This may be seen clearly in a passage from Levi-Strauss, explaining for the
simple forms of marriage the prohibition of parallel cousins and the approbation
of cross-cousins: each marriage between two lines A and B bears a (+) or (-)
sign, according to whether this couple results from a woman being lost to or
acquired by line A or B. In this regard it is not important whether the regime of
filiation is patrilineal or matrilineal. In a patrilineal or patrilocal regime, for
example, "related women are women lost; women brought in by marriage are
women gained. Each family descended from these marriages thus bears a sign,
which is determined, for the initial group, by whether the children's mother is a
daughter or a daughter-in-law. . . . The sign changes in passing from the brother
to the sister, since the brother gains a wife, while the sister is lost to her own
family." But, as Levi-Strauss remarks, one also changes signs in passing from
one generation to the next: "It depends upon whether, from the initial group's
point of view, the father has received a wife, or the mother has been transferred
outside, whether the sons have the right to a woman or owe a sister. Certainly, in
real life this difference does not mean that half the male cousins are destined to
remain bachelors. However, at all events, it does express the law that a man
cannot receive a wife except from the group from which a woman can be
claimed, because in the previous generation a sister or a daughter was lost, while
a brother owes a sister (or a father, a daughter) to the outside world if a woman
was gained in the previous generation. . . . The pivot-couple, formed by an A
man married to a B woman, obviously has two signs, according to whether it is
envisaged from the viewpoint of A, or that of B, and the same is true for
children. It is now only necessary to look at the cousins' generation to establish
that all those in the relationship (+ +) or (—) are parallel to one another, while
all those in the relationship (+-) or (-+) are cross."