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Family business

From:Geoff Horswood <geoffhorswood@...>
Date:Friday, November 19, 2004, 9:09
I'm trying to generate some vocabulary for Xinkutlan around the concepts of
family and relations.

I was thinking about some of the different ways Kazakh and some of the
other languages I know bits of classify different relatives, and I started
wondering.

Do your conlangs have any "interesting" ways of classifying family
relationships?  What distinctions are made/not made?
Eg are there separate words for elder and younger siblings?  Different
terms depending on birth order?  How far "out" does "brother" extend?  (Two
common parents, one common parent, uncles, friends, people from your
village...)
How many generations back and forward have specific titles (ie mother,
grandmother, great-grandmother etc)?  Do the ancestral ones vary depending
on which side of the family?
How do you refer to in-laws?  Do husbands and wives use different words for
family members?
What does your language's conculture consider to constitute "a family"?
Nuclear or extended- and how far extended?

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Sally Caves <scaves@...>