Categories for kinship vary between languages

Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 16:20 in Psychology & Sociology

Different languages refer to family relationships in different ways. For example, English speakers use two terms -- grandmother and grandfather -- to refer to grandparents, while Mandarin Chinese uses four terms. Many possible kinship categories, however, are never observed, which raises the question of why some kinship categories appear in the languages of the world but others do not. A new study shows that kinship categories across languages reflect general principles of communication.

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