Kinship terminology
Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world.
Though much of his work is now considered dated, he argued that kinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions.
Relatives marked with the same non-gray color are called by the same kinship term (apart from sex-differentiation in the sibling/cousin generation, except where this becomes structurally-relevant under the Crow and Omaha systems).
Note that in some versions of the Crow and Omaha systems, the relatives shown as "cousin" in the Crow and Omaha boxes of the chart are actually referred to as either "son/daughter" or "nephew/niece" (different terms are used by male ego vs. female ego).
The less common are Tri-relational Dyadic Terms which reference a pair of related entities which (i.e., this dyad) is in some way to single propositus.
Dual Propositus Tri-relational Kin-terms Terms of this type can be found in Murrinh-patha and Bininj Kunwok.
Though smaller, the Dyirbal dyadic kin-term inventory is also extensive (e and y stand for elder and younger):[5] FyB+eBC FyZ+eBC MyC+eZC MeZ+yZC MeB+yZC
MeBS+FyZD/S In Murrinh-patha, nonsingular pronouns are differentiated not only by the gender makeup of the group, but also by the members' interrelation.
If the members are in a sibling-like relation, a third pronoun (SIB) will be chosen distinct from the Masculine (MASC) and Feminine/Neuter (FEM).
[6] Some languages, such as Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Turkish, Sinhalese, Chinese (see Chinese kinship), Japanese, Korean, Khmer, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Tagalog (Filipino), Hungarian, Bulgarian, Nepalese, Navajo and Nahuatl add another dimension to some relations: relative age.
Similar features are seen also in Huichol,[7][8] some descendant languages of Proto-Austronesian (e.g. Fordata,[9] Kei,[10] and Yamdena[11]),[12] Bislama,[13] and Usarufa.
Like Iroquois people, Dravidians use the same words to refer to their father's sister and mother-in-law (atthai in Tamil, atthe in Kannada, and attha or atthayya in Telugu) and their mother's brother and father-in-law (maamaa in Tamil, maava in Kannada, and maavayya in Telugu).
In Kannada, distinction between these relationships may be made because sodara is added before atthe and maava to specifically refer to one's father's sister and mother's brother respectively, although this term is not used in direct address.
In Tamil, however, only one's mother's brother is captioned with thaai before maamaa because of the honor accorded this relationship.
