An Algebraic Account of the American Kinship Terminology by Dwight W. Read ALTHOUGH THE STUDY OF KINSHIP SYSTEMS has been a major focus for anthropological research since at least the time of Morgan, a completely satisfactory means for defining, characterizing, and analyzing the internal logic that structures a kinship terminology has remained elusive. Morgan's (1871) preliminary distinction of descriptive versus classificatory systems, Kroeber's (1909) seminal paper developing the concept of alternative dimensions along which culturally determined distinctions are said to be realized, and Rivers's (1900) "genealogical method" all still form basic approaches to the study of kinship terminology structure, even though none of these or their subsequent schools of thought has led to a completely sufficient analysis of structure as a form generatable by the logic of a few basic principles (cf. Radcliffe-Brown 1941; Lkvi-Strauss 196934, 493). Componential analysis, the logical consequent to Kroeber's work, has only partially succeeded in laying bare elementary rules, operations, and equations from which a terminology structure may be deduced. While it has provided a method both for presenting and comparing different kinship terminologies in a common idiom and for delineating aspects of the structure of kinship terminologies, exemplars of the componential-analysis method based on the American kinship ter

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