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A Note on Kalhori Kinship Terms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Amer Gheitury ,
Hasan Yasami  and
Kristin Kazzazi
Amer Gheitury
Affiliation:
Razi University, Iran
Hasan Yasami
Affiliation:
Razi University
Kristin Kazzazi
Affiliation:
Eichstatt University, Germany
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Abstract

Despite the great number of studies conducted by Western scholars exploring kinship terminologies in different languages, there seems to have been little attempt at dealing with kin words in Iranian languages like Kurdish. More specifically, Kalhori, as a southern dialect of Kurdish, has rarely been subject to studies of this nature. Underlining the significance of such studies in the wider linguistic and anthropological contexts, this study attempts to explore kin words Kalhori speakers use to refer to or address their relatives. We also make an attempt to investigate the possibility of presenting a formal explanation of the terms by placing them in a componential analysis framework.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 533 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2010

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References

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17 The form “-wa-” appears only where the second morpheme -zâ is affixed. Elsewhere it is used as a preposition equivalent to the English “to”. It should also be noted that the same morphological process is also at work in the Sorani dialect spoken in Javan Rud and Kamyaran in a word like kor-zâ-zâ but apparently without -wa-.

18 The word ruła “child” is used very often in address form as an expression of endearment.

19 Wallace and Atkins, “The Meaning of Kinship Terms,” 61.

20 Vincze, Lajos, “Kinship Terms and Address in a Hungarian Speaking Peasant Community in Rumania,” Ethnology, 17, no. 1 (1978): 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Following Lounsbury, F. G. (“A Formal Analysis of the Crow and Omaha-Type Kinship Terminologies,” in Explorations in Cultural Anthropology, ed. by Goodenough, W. H. [New York, 1964], 351–393)Google Scholar, Turner, J. (“A Formal Semantic Analysis of a Hindi Kinship Terminology,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, 9 [1975]: 263–292)CrossRefGoogle Scholar uses a formal semantic rule termed equivalence rule which may account for both primary meaning of Hindi kin terms and their extensions.

21 Wallace and Atkins, “The Meaning of Kinship Terms,” 68.

22 In a componential analysis of Old English Kinship terms, Bartlet, Guillermo (“A Note on Old English Kinship Semantics,” Journal of English Linguistics, 24 [1996]: 116)CrossRefGoogle Scholar uses the concept of side to divide kin words into paternal and maternal.