Abstract
Kin terms in some languages have suppletive roots according to the person of the possessor, as in Kaluli na:la ‘my daughter’, ga:la ‘your daughter’ versus ida ‘her/his daughter’. Suppletion is generally seen as a language-specific morphological peculiarity, but in this context there are a number of lexical and morphological similarities across languages, suggesting the motivation may also lie in the nature of kin terms themselves. We offer a typological assessment suppletive kin terms through a case study of the languages of New Guinea, where the phenomenon appears to be particularly common.