[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

Mon Jan 8 20:48:15 PST 2018

Henry,
Yes, that makes sense to me - the part about Vygotsky.

And just to be clear, this wasn't so much an attack on scientific usage of
terms as it was a matter of clan disputes - as I noted, my usage was
marking me as a Linguistic Anthropologist (I wrote "commonly used in
Linguistic Anthropology") rather than a Linguist. There's a surprisingly
wide gap between those two fields, both are communities of scholars
dedicated to building knowledge about language, but both use the word
differently. I was simply acknowledging that difference.

Happy New Year indeed!
-greg

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 9:16 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> Greg-
> Would I be wrong in saying that the way linguists use “cognate” is more
> Vygotskian, since it captures the historical development of the word, and
> the term as “commonly used” does not? And it more reflects what a community
> of scholars dedicated to language know? Forgive me, but I feel it does
> touch on the way in which science is under attack these days. Plus, I admit
> to a feeling that linguistics itself threw the baby out with the bath water
> when it shifted so radically from philology (historical linguistics) to
> synchronic linguistics around the turn of the 20th Century and we ended up
> with Chomsky. Probably a mountain out of a mole hill, but what the hey.
> Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond! Happy New Year!
> Henry
>
>
> > On Jan 8, 2018, at 7:38 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Henry,
> >
> > Lovely point about cognates!
> >
> > It rather delightfully gets to the point of the new kinship studies since
> > the Latin cognate of "cognate" is cognatus, meaning "blood relative".
> (and
> > thus you might say that I am using "cognate" in a new kinship kind of
> way)
> >
> > -greg
> >
> > p.s. a less delightful reading is that I'm simply using "cognates" in the
> > second and less common definition of "related, connected" in the general
> > sense. This happens to be a way that this term has been commonly used in
> > Linguistic Anthropology (as opposed to Linguistics proper). There, I
> ruined
> > it.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 3:19 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Great discussion!
> >>
> >> I’ve been watching episodes with my wife of “The Crown” and int’s
> >> interesting to view the chat discussion on kinship throught the lens of
> the
> >> royal family during the latter half of the 20th century. Beth Fernholt a
> >> little while ago cited an article in the NYTimes on estrangement, which
> >> certainly would apply to the happenings on "The Crown”. You probably
> learn
> >> as much about the meaning of familly by observing when a family isn’t
> >> acting like a family, and when the parts of a family disagree on how a
> >> family SHOULD act. Also, prototype theory (Eleanor Rosch): What do
> people
> >> agree on as the prototypical family?  I don’t mean a checklist of
> >> attributes. Rather, which is the kind of critter you would identify as
> more
> >> dog-like: a chihuaha or a German shepherd. This would vary across
> culture
> >> and time. Might one apply to the meaning of “family”?
> >>
> >> My understanding of the term “cognate” is that it pairs two words in
> >> different languages with similar meaning and (phonological) form. From
> >> google I get: “...having the same linguistic derivation as another; from
> >> the same original word or root (e.g., English is, German ist, Latin est,
> >> from Indo-European esti ). So, that strictly speaking Chinese and
> English
> >> have no cognates? And even if they do, “family” in English would not
> likely
> >> have a cognate in Chinese, nor the other way round.
> >> I guess the more general point is the importance of the historical when
> >> talking about meaning and form in language, especially on the cHat.
> >>
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Jan 8, 2018, at 2:12 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Martin:
> >>>
> >>> In Chinese (all Chinese, because all Chinese is based on the common
> >> written
> >>> language James was speaking of), a couple without children is a "jia".
> If
> >>> you are single, "jia" refers to your parents. If you are married, your
> >>> spouse is your "jia" whether or not you have children. When my
> >>> mother-in-law was alive, and my wife and I went home for Spring
> Festival,
> >>> it was always "hui jia". Now that she is dead, my wife says "hui guo"
> >> (i.e.
> >>> "return to our country" rather than "return to our family") because
> "jia"
> >>> refers to me.
> >>>
> >>> Korean is exactly the same, because the word for "family" is taken from
> >>> Chinese. But even in pure Korean, there is a clear connection with
> >> housing
> >>> (so for example when I humbly refer to my wife in pure, non-Chinese
> >>> inflected, Korean I say "uri jibsaram", literally, "the person in our
> >>> house").
> >>>
> >>> Whorf would probably turn your question around: are there ANY languages
> >>> besides Standard Average European that DO have a cognate for
> >>> English "family"? The answer in the two articles that Greg sent (Bloch
> >> and
> >>> Sahlins) seems to be no. On the other hand, both Chinese and Korean do
> >> have
> >>> the English distinction between "house" and "home", although it is not
> >>> grammaticized as it is in English (there is no equivalent for the
> >>> grammatical distinction between "in the house" and "at home" because
> >>> Chinese has neither prepositions nor articles).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> David Kellogg
> >>>
> >>> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> >>> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> >>> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> >>>
> >>> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> >>>
> >>> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 1:43 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hi Greg,
> >>>>
> >>>> The question I initially posted was really very simple: is there a
> >>>> language that does not have a cognate to the English word ‘family’? (I
> >>>> think ‘cognate’ is the correct term; what I mean is a word that would
> >>>> generally be translated as ‘family.’)
> >>>>
> >>>> Now I’ve learned that Chinese (Mandarin?) has a word that might be
> best
> >>>> translated as ‘household.’ I find that interesting.
> >>>>
> >>>> The underlying interest? Yes, I’m trying to make sense of the
> >>>> anthropological literature on kinship, and also the psychological
> >>>> literature on ‘contexts of children’s development.’ In both
> disciplines
> >>>> there seems to be a tendency to assume a definition of family along
> the
> >>>> lines of child plus biological parents. That’s what I take Malinowski
> to
> >>>> have been proposing. There are psychologists today who still assume
> >> such a
> >>>> definition.
> >>>>
> >>>> But of course it doesn’t work! There are families where the kids are
> >>>> adopted. There are married couples where the man, for example, has a
> >> secret
> >>>> illegitimate child, so they do not form a family. There are single
> >> parent
> >>>> families. There are families in which a same-sex couple has a child
> who
> >> is
> >>>> not biologically related to them. There are families who had a
> surrogate
> >>>> mother. There are now families where the child has 3 biological
> parents
> >>>> (one provided mitochondrial dna). Note that in several of these kinds
> of
> >>>> family, there is no ‘blood’ (or genes) shared among the members.
> >>>>
> >>>> So I started to wonder if there are societies that have nothing that
> >> they
> >>>> call family!
> >>>>
> >>>> But I am also trying to figure out where anthropology is today. For
> >>>> example, is a distinction still drawn between family, clan, and tribe?
> >> If
> >>>> so, how are these defined? Sahlins moves between family and clan, for
> >>>> instance. I understand that his proposal is that kinship is at root
> >> mutual
> >>>> relations of being, the way people participate in each other’s
> >> existence.
> >>>> In that sense, you and I are kin, based on our relationship through
> >> xmca.
> >>>> But I don’t think that we are family. So what distinguishes the mutual
> >>>> relations of being that constitute a family?
> >>>>
> >>>> These are the things I’m confused about. I am rapidly coming once
> again
> >> to
> >>>> the conclusion that understanding nothing of the matter.  :)
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>> "I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss
> >>>> matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that
> my
> >>>> partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually
> >> with
> >>>> the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Jan 7, 2018, at 9:55 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
> >
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Martin,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Yes, I agree that Sahlins didn't offer much in the way of
> >> cross-cultural
> >>>>> cognates of "family". But I'm still a little at a loss for why you
> are
> >> so
> >>>>> interested in this English word (e.g., why not "kin"? why not the
> >>>> preferred
> >>>>> word in some other culture that extends to a different set of
> >>>>> relationships). Without a good working definition of what you mean by
> >>>>> "family". Do the other examples that people have given "count" as
> >>>> "family",
> >>>>> e.g., sports teams, brothers-in-arms? Or are you taking the approach
> >> that
> >>>>> family=father(biological?)+mother(again, biological, and what about
> a
> >>>>> second father? or a second mother?)+child(biological? and today,
> would
> >> a
> >>>>> dog do in place of a child - e.g., a couple at the park with their
> dog
> >>>> who
> >>>>> refer to their grouping as a "family"?).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I guess I'm not sure where you are going with this interest in
> "family"
> >>>>> (and what has it got to do with the kinship relations of this here
> >>>> family?).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -greg
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 5:33 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Yes, I’ve been reading Sahlins. Very interesting take on kinship,
> >> along
> >>>>>> the lines of the ‘ontological turn’ in cultural anthropology. Greg
> can
> >>>>>> explain that..  :)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> But does Sahlins define family?  (No!)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Martin
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or
> discuss
> >>>>>> matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that
> >> my
> >>>>>> partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end
> usually
> >>>> with
> >>>>>> the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Jan 7, 2018, at 7:07 PM, Greg Thompson <
> greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
> >>>
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> <image.png><Sahlins, Marshall - What is Kinship.pdf>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> >>>>> Assistant Professor
> >>>>> Department of Anthropology
> >>>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> >>>>> Brigham Young University
> >>>>> Provo, UT 84602
> >>>>> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
> >>>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Anthropology
> > 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> > Brigham Young University
> > Provo, UT 84602
> > WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
> > http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>
>

-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson