ABSTRACT

Kinship terms belong to the basic vocabulary of a language. Although kinship terms can be uniformly fixed in genealogical categories according to their relationship to an Ego, languages show great diachronic and synchronic differences in kinship terms. Objective differentiations (e.g. patrilineage vs matrilineage or older vs younger siblings) are normally reflected in the kinship terms of a language community only if they are relevant for the given community. The closest relatives (e.g. parents) also appear to be uniformly denoted with morphologically simple forms. The study of kinship terms is an interdisciplinary field, in which both anthropologists and sociologists are involved. ( also componential analysis)

References

Benveniste, E. 1969. Le vocabulaire de la parenté. In Le vocabulaire des institutions indoeuropéennes, vol. 2. 203-76. Paris.