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Passmore S, Barth W, Greenhill SJ, Quinn K, Sheard C, Argyriou P, Birchall J, Bowern C, Calladine J, Deb A, Diederen A, Metsäranta NP, Araujo LH, Schembri R, Hickey-Hall J, Honkola T, Mitchell A, Poole L, Rácz PM, Roberts SG, Ross RM, Thomas-Colquhoun E, Evans N, Jordan FM. Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0283218. [PMID: 37224178 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283218] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2022] [Accepted: 03/03/2023] [Indexed: 05/26/2023] Open
Abstract
For a single species, human kinship organization is both remarkably diverse and strikingly organized. Kinship terminology is the structured vocabulary used to classify, refer to, and address relatives and family. Diversity in kinship terminology has been analyzed by anthropologists for over 150 years, although recurrent patterning across cultures remains incompletely explained. Despite the wealth of kinship data in the anthropological record, comparative studies of kinship terminology are hindered by data accessibility. Here we present Kinbank, a new database of 210,903 kinterms from a global sample of 1,229 spoken languages. Using open-access and transparent data provenance, Kinbank offers an extensible resource for kinship terminology, enabling researchers to explore the rich diversity of human family organization and to test longstanding hypotheses about the origins and drivers of recurrent patterns. We illustrate our contribution with two examples. We demonstrate strong gender bias in the phonological structure of parent terms across 1,022 languages, and we show that there is no evidence for a coevolutionary relationship between cross-cousin marriage and bifurcate-merging terminology in Bantu languages. Analysing kinship data is notoriously challenging; Kinbank aims to eliminate data accessibility issues from that challenge and provide a platform to build an interdisciplinary understanding of kinship.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sam Passmore
- Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative (ECDI), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Japan
| | - Wolfgang Barth
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
| | - Simon J Greenhill
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Kyla Quinn
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
| | - Catherine Sheard
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Paraskevi Argyriou
- School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Joshua Birchall
- Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, Pará, Brazil
- Department of Linguistics, The University of New Mexico, New Mexico, United States of America
| | - Claire Bowern
- Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America
| | - Jasmine Calladine
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Angarika Deb
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
| | - Anouk Diederen
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Niklas P Metsäranta
- Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian, and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | | | - Rhiannon Schembri
- Research School of Biology, Ecology, and Evolution, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
| | - Jo Hickey-Hall
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Terhi Honkola
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian, and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Alice Mitchell
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Institute for African Studies, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Lucy Poole
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Péter M Rácz
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Cognitive Science Department, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Sean G Roberts
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- School of English, Communications and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
| | - Robert M Ross
- School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Nicholas Evans
- Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative (ECDI), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
| | - Fiona M Jordan
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
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