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Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 41:1 (2018) ► pp.1–21

Kinship in three Tamangic varieties

| Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
| University of Surrey
| Tribhuvan University

We examine kinship terms in three closely related Tamangic varieties: Manange, Nar, and Phu. Using Proto-Tamangic and Proto Tibeto-Burman reconstructions, we track cognate forms as well as structural innovations. Our account allows a first examination of lexico-semantic aspects of Phu, an under-documented representative of the Nar-Phu complex. While Nar-Phu is usually treated as a single language, considerable differences exist in the organization of all three kinship term systems. Kinship terms are considered to be conservative, basic vocabulary and thus indicative of close within-family relationships, but our study shows that even closely related varieties can show considerable differences in kin nomenclature.

Keywords: kinship, Tamangic, social organization, etymology, structural innovation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The languages and methods of data collection
  • 3.Form analysis
  • 4.Comparison of lexical similarity between varieties
  • 5.Concluding comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.17002.hil
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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Hildebrandt, Kristine A., Oliver Bond & Dubi Nanda Dhakal
2018. Kinship in three Tamangic varieties. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 41:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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