Conceptualizing language kinship: How Fennocentric is Fenno-Ugricity? (abstract pp. 164–165) (2025)

Conceptualizing language kinship or How Finnocentric is Finno-Ugricity?

2023

This is an expanded and somewhat updated, but still very raw version of a paper presented at CIFU XII in Oulu, Finland in August 2015. It is in the process of becoming an article, but the time passed since its original presentation and the amount of focus on detailed data in the meantime is likely to limit my critical perception of the whole — the overall structure, the chronologies, the omissions, redundancies and inconsistencies, as well as bibliographic lacunae. This is why I have decided to hang it up for comments in this rough state. I will be most grateful for any feedback — ŁS) (original abstract: https://www.academia.edu/41497685/Conceptualizing_language_kinship_How_Fennocentric_is_Fenno_Ugricity_pp_164_165_.

Kinship Terminology and Linguistic Structure

American Anthropologist, 2009

Interpretations and misinterpretations of Finno-Ugric language relatedness

BACK TO THE ROOTS? CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE 'ROOT' IN FINNO-UGRIC LINGUISTICS

Keele kõrgendikud / Highlands of Language.

In Finno-Ugric linguistics, words are usually analyzed in terms of stems and affixes instead of abstract monosyllabic 'roots' in the Indo-European sense. However, there have been attempts to introduce the concept of 'root' alongside the historically disyllabic stems, in order to account for less regular connections between words and the non-canonic word formation mechanisms of the expressive vocabulary. Here, a few such attempts are critically analyzed in their historical and ideological contexts.

Talk Is Not Cheap: Kinship Terminologies and the Origins of Language - eScholarship

Structure and dynamics, 2013

Kinship terminology is a human universal, a kind of cultural knowledge circulated through language. In this paper I explore the possibility that the need for social rules prompted the development of fully syntactic language via kinship terminologies. In other words, kinship terms are at the core of modern language. They require uniquely human cognitive features such as symbolic reference and recursiveness, which in turn require a cognitive capacity beyond that of non-human primates. The conceptualization of kinship types was crucial in the transition from non-human primate to human social organization and the 'invention' of kinship terms facilitated this transition. The heuristics used in kin classification could have provided the decisive cognitive leap that introduced the essential tools for organizing and expanding social relationships and increasing the chances for survival. Thus kinship terms could have been the original nucleus of human language.

Conceptual implications of kinship terminological systems: Special problems and multiple analytic approaches

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010

Research in anthropology has shown that kin terminologies have a complex combinatorial structure and vary systematically across cultures. This article argues that universals and variation in kin terminology result from the interaction of (1) an innate conceptual structure of kinship, homologous with conceptual structure in other domains, and (2) principles of optimal, "grammatical" communication active in language in general. Kin terms from two languages, English and Seneca, show how terminologies that look very different on the surface may result from variation in the rankings of a universal set of constraints. Constraints on kin terms form a system: some are concerned with absolute features of kin (sex), others with the position (distance and direction) of kin in "kinship space," others with groups and group boundaries (matrilines, patrilines, generations, etc.). Also, kin terms sometimes extend indefinitely via recursion, and recursion in kin terminology has parallels with recursion in other areas of language. Thus the study of kinship sheds light on two areas of cognition, and their phylogeny. The conceptual structure of kinship seems to borrow its organization from the conceptual structure of space, while being specialized for representing genealogy. And the grammar of kinship looks like the product of an evolved grammar faculty, opportunistically active across traditional domains of semantics, syntax, and phonology. Grammar is best understood as an offshoot of a uniquely human capacity for playing coordination games.

Introduction [of Multilingual Finnic. Language contact and change.]

Multilingual Finnic. Language contact and change. Sofia Björklöf & Santra Jantunen (eds). [Uralica Helsingiensia 14.] Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian Society. 7-12., 2019

Language contact and language typology: anything goes, but not quite Ewald Hekking

Human kinship, from conceptual structure to grammar

Research in anthropology has shown that kin terminologies have a complex combinatorial structure and vary systematically across cultures. This article argues that universals and variation in kin terminology result from the interaction of (1) an innate conceptual structure of kinship, homologous with conceptual structure in other domains, and (2) principles of optimal, “grammatical” communication active in language in general. Kin terms from two languages, English and Seneca, show how terminologies that look very different on the surface may result from variation in the rankings of a universal set of constraints. Constraints on kin terms form a system: some are concerned with absolute features of kin (sex), others with the position (distance and direction) of kin in “kinship space,” others with groups and group boundaries (matrilines, patrilines, generations, etc.). Also, kin terms sometimes extend indefinitely via recursion, and recursion in kin terminology has parallels with recursion in other areas of language. Thus the study of kinship sheds light on two areas of cognition, and their phylogeny. The conceptual structure of kinship seems to borrow its organization from the conceptual structure of space, while being specialized for representing genealogy. And the grammar of kinship looks like the product of an evolved grammar faculty, opportunistically active across traditional domains of semantics, syntax, and phonology. Grammar is best understood as an offshoot of a uniquely human capacity for playing coordination games.

WimVandenbussche, ErnstHåkon Jahr and PeterTrudgill (eds.). Language Ecology for the 21st Century: Linguistic Conflicts and Social Environments. Oslo, Norway: Novus Press. 2013. 342 pp. Hb (9788270997480) US$65.00

Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2015