A Comparative Study of Central Kurdish, Persian, and English Kinship Terms

Abstract

The present research is a comparative study on Central Kurdish (also known as Sorani), Persian, and English kinship terms based on the ideas put forward by universalist anthropologists who believe in the existence of an underlying uniform, universal structure under the apparent diversity in kinship systems and claim that all kinship relations, from the simplest to the most complicated, are based on the nuclear family which is extended through a linking relative who knits two families together. To describe and study all kinship systems, these anthropologists propose a universal set of criteria. Each language, according to its cultural features, uses some of these criteria. The aim of this study was to find, based on principles and methods of universal anthropology, an answer to the question of what criteria do Kurdish people use to categorize their kin? As a result, we found out that Kurdish uses the five criteria of consanguinity-affinity, gender, generation, side of the family and relative age while Farsi makes use of consanguinity-affinity, gender, generation and side of the family; and English utilizes consanguinity-affinity, gender, and generation. Additionally, although English belongs to the Eskimo kinship system, both Farsi and Kurdish are classified under the Sudanese system.

Keywords

• kinship terms
• kurdish language
• linguistics
• anthropology
• nuclear family
• universalism