Year: 1974
Type: article
Abstract: In 1871, Lewis Henry Morgan described Malayan system of relationship as: the oldest form of consanguinity and affinity now existing upon earth (1871, p. 453) and simplest terminology among the several families of mankind (ibid., p. 453). This essay will examine Malayan elements of Malay kinship terms, studied during writer's stay in northwestern Malay state of Kedah during 1967-68, in order to reassess Morgan's attribution of extreme simplicity to pure form of those terms. Such an effort seems warranted since it is this very simplicity that has rendered terminologies falling broadly within confines of Morgan's Malayan category less interesting to social scientists than other terminological systems that appear toi yield more useful clues to cultural and sociological analyses. Students of formal semantic analysis have tended to confine themselves to com plex and exotic terminological systems and only in rare cases (e.g., Good enough, 1965 and Schneider, 1965) have they even approached relative simplicity of Western kinship terms. Social anthropologists
Author: D.J. Banks
Language: Dutch
Topic: Language and Culture
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W653009595