Varikin Findings: There are no universals in the cultural evolution of kinship terminology

There is huge potential for variation between kinship terminology (systems of words for relatives) cross-culturally. In fact, for a set of 16 relatives, there are 10,480,142,147 theoretically possible ways to categorise them. Given the potential for effectively unbridled variation in kinship terminology, observed diversity seems remarkably constrained, and has previously been categorised into six key … Read more

Varikin Findings: How Pama-Nyungan Grandparent Naming Systems Change

The VariKin project has examined the cultural evolution of kinship terminology from a range of perspectives and methods. Considerable research by our group and others has focused on the comparison of cousin and sibling terms, but grandparent terms, the topic of this paper, are largely understudied. The social salience of grandparents, due to their frequent … Read more

VariKin Findings: Frequently-used kinship terms evolve slowly

— by Maisie Ford Language is constantly changing. As new words are born or enter a language, old words fall out of use. Linguists have known for a long time that some words endure longer than others. Some core vocabulary, like numbers, names of common animals/plants, and words for parts of the body can be … Read more

New paper on Murrinhpatha children’s understanding of kinship lexicon and grammar (post by Dr Alice Mitchell)

Among the vast number of things children need to learn about language is how to appropriately refer to other people. One way to do this is to use kinship terms—words like ‘great-grandmother’, ‘brother-in-law’, or ‘sister’. The particular set of kinterms a child needs to know will obviously depend on the languages they’re learning to speak. … Read more

Summer intern, Jasmine Calladine’s guest blog post

This summer I worked with Dr Alice Mitchell researching how person reference terms are used in child-directed speech in English. To do this we made use of the CHILDES database (example pictured below), a collection of transcriptions of children’s speech.  Instances of person reference were recorded and coded into five categories, kin terms, kin terms … Read more

Overview of the CAKTAM Workshop January 2018

Notions of family and kin terms vary in complexity and structure, so to what extent does linguistic and cultural variation affect the acquisition of kinship knowledge? While kinship provides the major framework for social organisation in many societies, we still know very little about how children learn to categorise different kinds of kin.  The ‘Children’s … Read more

CAKTAM Workshop Handbook and Programme

Today we are delighted to welcome colleagues from around the globe as we meet for this evening’s opening of the CAKTAM Workshop.  Over the next few days we’ll be sharing and learning together, ideas and methods for children’s acquisition of kinship knowledge. We’ll be keeping you updated on Twitter and providing an overview here of all the … Read more

Children’s Acquisition of Kinship Knowledge: Theory and Method (CAKTAM) Workshop

 Upcoming Workshop Children’s Acquisition of Kinship Knowledge: Theory and Method 25th-26th January 2018, Bristol, UK How do children learn kinship concepts? Given that both kin terms and kinship systems vary in complexity, to what extent does linguistic and cultural variation affect the acquisition of kinship knowledge? For many societies around the world, kinship provides the … Read more

[scrapbook] Morgan’s Question.

From LH Morgan’s introduction to “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family“: The tables, however, are the main results of this investigation. In their importance and value they reach far beyond any present use of their contents which the writer may be able to indicate. If they can be perfected, and the systems … Read more