Investigating Kinship Terms in Kalhori Variety of Eyvan

Abstract

Systematic study of the Kinship terms in the languages of the world can provide a unique opportunity for thorough analysis of both their linguistic features and mechanisms and also the internal architecture of the communities of their speakers. This paper seeks to present a detailed analysis of kinship terms in Kalhori (the variety spoken in the city of Eyvan and its neighborhood). The notion of competing motivations like iconicity and frequency of use along with Murdock’s (1948) standard classification of kinship terms constitute the core of the theoretical framework of the present paper. It is demonstrated that the Kalhori variety of Eyvan contains 27 and 22 terms for referring to consanguineous and affinal relations respectively. Moreover, the findings of the present study shows that Kalhori of Eyvan possesses18 elementary terms, 19 derivative terms, and 12 descriptive terms. Three special terms which can cover a large number of family relations in Kalhori are also discussed at the end of this paper.

Keywords

• kurdish language
• eyvani variety
• kinship terms
• competing motivations
• iconicity
• murdock's classification