Some languages display a certain kind of polysemy pattern in which the kinship term used for referring to an anchor’s mother (M) is also used for referring to a mother’s sister (MZ). Usually, that is done by adding a modifying ‘big’ for a maternal aunt that is older than the anchor’s mother, and ‘little’ for a maternal aunt that is younger. This pattern occurs in Waigali, as can be seen in ‎(1).

(1) Waigali [wbk] (Nuristani)

The feature occurs in a minority of the sample languages but it has a distinctly subareal distribution. It occurs, on the one hand in Eastern Nuristan, and on the other, in Eastern Karakorum. This polysemy is in some of those languages in addition to a general term for a maternal aunt, lexically distinct from the term for ‘mother’. In other cases, the polysemy also extends to the anchor’s father’s sister.