International Summer School on
Language Documentation and Description

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden

5 July - 17 July 2010

Documenting Kinship Terminology

This course will provide practical and theoretical training on one of the most basic vocabulary domains in every language and culture. In this perspective, documenting kinship terminology is a classical but efficient way of studying simultaneously, both special core vocabulary and heavy cultural differentiation. Kinship terminology is not just a word to word translation (which is often impossible unless in a periphrastic mode), but refers to a taxonomic system, which is often difficult to discover when no appropriate tools are implemented for that purpose. Therefore, in this course, methods range from typological (Morgan, 1870; Murdock, 1949) and componential analyses (Goodenough, 1970) to the structural level (Lévi-Strauss, 1965; Godelier, 1998). Each session will examine one type of terminology, associated with representative examples, but discussion will of course be opened to mixed and alternative types, and moreover, to other components of kinship systems such as residence, marriage rules, descent, social organisation, all of which are necessary to link kinship terminologies to actual social contexts.

• Monday: Eskimo type
• Tuesday: Iroquoian type
• Wednesday: Crow-Omaha type
• Thursday: Hawaiian type
• Friday: Dravidian and Sudanese type

Diagram and code symbols will be presented as common denominator for interdisciplinary perspectives. Examples will cover the five continents, from Europe to Asia, and from Africa to Americas and Oceania. A historical perspective will be proposed when proto-reconstructions are available. If you want to know why F = FB = FFBS in some terminologies, or where societies do exist without a father, a husband or a mother, just join this course!

• Cai Hua 1997 – Une société sans père ni mari. Les Na de Chine, Paris, PUF.
• Foley, William 1997 – Anthropological linguistics: an introduction, Oxford, Blackwell.
• Geffray, Christian 1990 – Ni père, ni mère. Critique de la parenté, le cas Makhuwa, Paris, Seuil.
• Godelier, Maurice (et al.) 1998 – Transformations of kinship, Washington, Smithsonian Institution.
• Goodenough, William 1970 – Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology, Chicago.
• Goody, Jack 1985 – The European Family. A Historico-Anthropological Essay, Oxford.
• Levi-Strauss, Claude 1965 – The future of kinship studies, Proceedings of the Royal A.I. of G.B.I.
• Morgan, Lewis H. – Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, Washington, S.I.
• Murdock, G.P. 1949 – Social Structure, New-York, Macmillan.