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Related Concept Videos

Components of Language01:24

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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs. “eh”). Phonemes combine to...
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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Human kinship, from conceptual structure to grammar.

Doug Jones1

  • 1Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. douglas.jones@anthro.utah.edu

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
|January 6, 2011
PubMed
Summary

Kinship terminologies show universal patterns and cultural variations due to innate cognitive structures and optimal communication principles. This research explores the grammar of kinship, revealing insights into human cognition and language evolution.

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Area of Science:

  • Anthropology
  • Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Kin terminologies exhibit complex combinatorial structures and systematic cross-cultural variation.
  • Previous research highlights the systematic nature of these variations across different cultures.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explain universals and variation in kin terminology.
  • To propose that these result from the interaction of innate kinship structures and general communication principles.
  • To analyze kin terms from English and Seneca to illustrate these principles.

Main Methods:

  • Comparative analysis of kin terms from English and Seneca.
  • Identification of universal constraints and their variable ranking across languages.
  • Examination of recursive properties in kin terminology and their parallels in general language.

Main Results:

  • Kin terminologies, despite surface differences, can arise from variations in constraint rankings.
  • Kin term constraints involve absolute features, relative positions in "kinship space", and group affiliations.
  • Recursion in kin terminology mirrors recursion in other linguistic domains.

Conclusions:

  • Kinship conceptual structure may be organized by spatial cognition principles, specialized for genealogy.
  • Kinship grammar appears to be a product of an evolved grammar faculty, active across semantic, syntactic, and phonological domains.
  • Grammar is understood as an emergent property of human coordination game capacity.