Issues in the classification of kinship terminologies: Toward a new typology
Anthropos, (2006)Abstract
Kinship terms – like words in other domains – are part of the general semantic system of contrastive sense and reference while encoding pragmatic conceptualizations of a particular substantive domain. A good classification of types of terminology takes account of intrinsic structure in the categorized world – for words, both semantic and pragmatic structure – while enabling clean and effective analytic statements
relating to given theoretical goals. For data universes which are fairly well-understood and which have received theoretical attention, revised and improved data categorizations may offer a powerful and effective means for the refinement of theory.