A Formal Account of the Hawaiian- and Eskimo-Type Kinship Terminologies

A description of Egyptian kinship terminology of the Middle Kingdom, c. 2000-1650 B.C.

“…Relatives of parents' generation would be called 'father' and 'mother', while those in the generation of ego's children would all be classified as 'son' and 'daughter'. Although deviations from this rule are found in some variants of the Hawaiian system, adjacent generations are terminologically marked off from each other in every Hawaiian system (Buchler 1964). Janssen (1981:63) has suggested that the Egyptian system was Hawaiian, pointing out that the terms distinguished mainly betweeri generations; However, this is true only of lineal kin (i.e.…”

“…ego's parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, etc), and every kinship system differentiates lineals by generation. 12 The rules formulated by Buchler (1964) for the Hawaiian type fail to generate the Egyptian system. The main distinction in the Egyptian terminology is not one between generations, but rather between lineals (for whom the terms it, mwt and s3(t) were used; the lineals of ego's spouse and possibly also his ChSp (n. 9 above) apparently also come under this heading) and non-lineals (including those of ego's spouse), who were all termed sn(t).…”

A volta do parentesco: Joan Bestard Camps em conversa com João de Pina-Cabral

“…Nos anos 2000, o que está em causa é uma forma de evolucionismo que se inspira nas novas descobertas que têm vindo a ser feitas no estudo do funcionamento do cérebro e da mente humana, da evolução da cognição e da evolução dos sistemas de comunicação. Estamos muito longe das velhas teses formalistas sobre o parentesco dos anos 1950, apesar dessas também se terem inspirado numa preocupação com os sistemas cognitivos (estou a pensar no estruturalismo de Floyd Lounsbury (1964), que tentava compreender a forma como se encadeavam as unidades mínimas do parentesco). Não são os aspectos formais dos processos cognitivos que hoje nos interessam, mas sim a análise intensiva de como é que se vai desenvolvendo a possibilidade da comunicação humana -tanto ao nível da espécie (filogenia) como ao nível da pessoa singular (ontogenia).…”

Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

“…Bringing these data together is important, because kinship terminology studies have made valuable contributions to our understanding of social structure. For example, studies have shown how linguistic denotation indicates group marriage norms [15] and how those rules are manipulated for economic [16], or reproductive benefit [17,18]. Research has used kinterms to identify cross-cultural differences in parental care roles [19] and revealed logical structures in terminology [20,21].…”