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Ideal Language and Kinship Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ernest Gellner
Ernest Gellner*
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

This paper is inter-disciplinary. Its disadvantage is that the author is not sufficiently conversant with the disciplines it is inter. He may however, like Lord Wavell, claim that at least the thread that binds them is his own.

The paper is of philosophic interest in that it is inspired by, and hopes to shed some light on, the notion of an ideal language. It is of interest to social anthropology in that its main subject is kinship structure. It may be of interest to mathematicians in setting a task.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1957 , pp. 235 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © 1957, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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References

1 Strictly speaking, two steps are involved. We begin with our ordered triads. Then a dyadic relation of ’ being directly related’ is defined in terms of the triadic relation, quite simply: “any member of a triad is directly related to each of the other two. (Df.)” We then define ‘being indirectly related’ in the following way: “If A is related directly or indirectly to B, and B is related similarly to C, then A and C are (at least) indirectly related. (Df.)”. This last definition is not circular.