In the last issue of Science (25 May, 2012), a plea by Stephen Levinson [\u00b4\u00b41] for the study of kinship terminology, and an article by Charles Kemp and Terry Regier [2] making a novel contribution to that study.<\/p>\n
Levinson writes:<\/p>\n
\n“In 1860, Lewis Henry Morgan heard an Iowa man on a Nebraska reservation describe a small boy as \u201cuncle.\u201d Fascinated, he embarked on lifelong research into the kinship systems of the world\u2019s cultures, which culminated in a typology of kin categories. Work on kinship categories \ufb02ourished for a hundred years, but then became unfashionable. Yet, kinship is crucial to the transmission of human genes, culture, mores, and assets. Recent studies have begun to reinvigorate the study of kinship categories. \u2026 Kinship is a fertile domain in which to ask a question at the heart of the cognitive sciences: Why do humans have the conceptual categories they do? \u2026 There are more than 6000 languages, each with a different system of kin classi\ufb01cation, at least in detail. \u2026 What constrains this exuberant diversity of systems?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In their article entitled “Kinship categories across languages re\ufb02ect general communicative principles”, Kemp and Regier argue:<\/p>\n
\n“Languages vary in their systems of kinship categories but the scope of possible variation appears to be constrained. Previous accounts of kin classi\ufb01cation have often emphasized constraints that are speci\ufb01c to the domain of kinship and are not derived from general principles. Here we propose an account that is founded on two domain-general principles: Good systems of categories are simple, and they enable informative communication. We show computationally that kin classi\ufb01cation systems in the world\u2019s languages achieve a nearoptimal tradeoff between these two competing principles. We also show that our account explains several speci\ufb01c constraints on kin classi\ufb01cation proposed previously. Because the principles of simplicity and informativeness are also relevant to other semantic domains, the tradeoff between them may provide a domain-general foundation for variation in category systems across languages.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It seems to me that Kemp and Regier’s ‘simplicity’ and ‘informativeness’ taken together play the same role as ‘relevance’ defined in relevance theory as a negative function of processing efforts and a positive function of cognitive effets, and that their findings are consistent with predicitions following from the theory’s ‘cognitive principle of relevance’. Be that as it may, this thought-provoking paper may indeed contribute to a new start in work on kinship terminologies, and on categories systems more generally, based on sound pragmatic principles.<\/p>\n
PS: Of related interest in this issue of Science, an article by Michael C. Frank and Noah D. Goodman entitled “Predicting Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Games” [3].<\/p>\n
\n\n\n[1] Levinson, S. C. (2012). Kinship and human thought. science<\/em>, 336<\/em>(6084), 988-989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n[2] Kemp, C., & Regier, T. (2012). Kinship categories across languages reflect general communicative principles. Science<\/em>, 336<\/em>(6084), 1049-1054.<\/p>\n\n\n\n[3] Frank, M. C., & Goodman, N. D. (2012). Predicting pragmatic reasoning in language games. Science<\/em>, 336<\/em>(6084), 998-998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the last issue of Science (25 May, 2012), a plea by Stephen Levinson [\u00b4\u00b41] for the study of kinship terminology, and an article by Charles Kemp and Terry Regier [2] making a novel contribution to that study. Levinson writes: “In 1860, Lewis Henry Morgan heard an Iowa man on a Nebraska reservation describe a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Is kinship back? - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/dan-sperber\/is-kinship-back\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is kinship back? - International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the last issue of Science (25 May, 2012), a plea by Stephen Levinson [\u00b4\u00b41] for the study of kinship terminology, and an article by Charles Kemp and Terry Regier [2] making a novel contribution to that study. Levinson writes: “In 1860, Lewis Henry Morgan heard an Iowa man on a Nebraska reservation describe a […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/dan-sperber\/is-kinship-back\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-27T11:31:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-07-24T14:18:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@dzfsqsd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Sperber\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/\",\"name\":\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/dan-sperber\/is-kinship-back\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/dan-sperber\/is-kinship-back\/\",\"name\":\"Is kinship back? - International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-27T11:31:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-07-24T14:18:39+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/6d6c8fd5968dd89eb28b9a6bd5e500a9\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/dan-sperber\/is-kinship-back\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/6d6c8fd5968dd89eb28b9a6bd5e500a9\",\"name\":\"Dan Sperber\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/dan-96x96.jpg\",\"caption\":\"Dan Sperber\"},\"description\":\"description\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.dan.sperber.fr\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dzfsqsd\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17433,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/17433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}