Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

PLoS ONE • Vol/Iss. 18(5) • Public Library of Science • • Published In • Pages: e0283218 •
By Passmore, Sam, Barth, Wolfgang, Greenhill, Simon J. , Quinn, Kyla, Sheard, Catherine, Argyriou, Paraskevi, Birchall, Joshua, Bowern, Claire, Calladine, Jasmine, Deb, Angarika, Diederen, Anouk, Metsäranta, Niklas P., Henrique Araujo, Luis, Schembri, Rhiannon, Hickey-Hall, Jo, Honkola, Terhi, Mitchell, Alice, Poole, Lucy, Rácz, Péter M., Roberts, Sean G., Ross, Robert M., Thomas-Colquhoun, Ewan, Evans, Nicholas, Jordan, Fiona M.

Abstract

Kinbank is a global database of 210,903 kinship terms derived from 1,229 spoken and signed languages. The authors created Kinbank as a tool to help explain recurring patterns across cultures through kinship terminology. They illustrate its usefulness by addressing two questions as an example: 1) Is there gender bias in the phonological structure of parent terms? and 2) Did bifurcate-merging terminology and cross-cousin marriage co-evolve in Bantu languages? Using a Bayesian phylogenetic approach, the authors find support for the first question, but none for the latter.

Samples

Sample Used Coded Data Comment
Ethnographic Atlas (EA)Other researchersUsed by authors to source data on cross-cousin marriage.
KinbankResearchers' ownA global database of 210,903 kinship terms from 1,229 spoken languages.

Hypotheses (2)

HypothesisSupported
There is gender bias in the phonological structure of parent terms.Supported
There is a co-evolutionary relationship between bifurcate-merging terminology and cross-cousin marriage.Not Supported
Documents and Hypotheses Filed By: isanaraja