Kinship Systems, Linguistic Classification, and Language

Typology

Contributing to the Modern Human Origins Debate

World Wide Kin Terminological Database,

with corresponding bibliography

2500 languages

www.kinshipstudies.org

Task I

• REORIENT the historical typology from the intragenerational merging/bifurcation of genealogical lines to the merging/bifurcation of generational levels; from cousin to sibling terms; from substantial categories (parent, sibling, spouse) to relational components (relative age, relative sex, polarity); from genealogical semantics to syntactic, morphological, and phonetic patterning; from the binaries of consanguinity and affinity to the complexities of consanguinity, affinity, adoption, and mortality

Kinship terminologies - Types

Vertical Transformations

Task II

• BRIDGE the gap between the historical typology of kinship terminologies and linguistic typology. Johanna Nichols’s (1992) “population linguistics approach” has identified two major areas of the world, with the dominance of either head-marking or dependent marking languages. This corresponds closely to Morgan’s (1871) division of world kinship systems into “classificatory” and “descriptive.”

Task III

• BRIDGE the gap between the historical typology of kinship terminologies and etymological studies within specific language families. Semantic typologies derived from the study of kinship terminologies may assist linguists in identifying hidden etymological connections, and allow them to work out from these etymological suggestions to new phonetic laws.

Indo-European *mer- ‘brother; affine’

• IE *bhrātēr/bhreHtēr ‘brother’

• Lith martì ‘bride, young woman, daughter-in-law, female affine’

• Germ *brūdi- ‘bride’ (< IE *mrūti-)

• Alb shemër ‘co-wife, concubine, female rival’ (< OAlb shemërë < *sm-mer-yā ‘co-wife’ or *sub-marīta)

• Latv márša ‘brother’s wife’• Lat maritus ‘husband’

Task IV

• INTEGRATE the historical typology of kinship terminologies with the genetic classifications of human languages and to test the extant proposals for macrophyla

Task V

• COMPARE the historical typology of kinship terminologies with the results recently obtained in population genetics from mtDNA and the Y chromosome

Task VI

• CONSTRUCT a multidisciplinary model of research into modern human origins and ancient human dispersals, which takes into account evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and population genetics

Linguistic diversity - North America

Linguistic diversity - South America

Linguistic diversity - AFRICA

Mitochondrial DNA diversity - America

Y Chromosome - Gene Tree

Phylogeny of Sibling Sets