Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

Sam Passmore; Wolfgang Barth; Simon J Greenhill; Kyla Quinn; Catherine Sheard; Paraskevi Argyriou; Joshua Birchall; Claire Bowern; Jasmine Calladine; Angarika Deb; Anouk Diederen; Niklas P Metsäranta; Luis Henrique Araujo; Rhiannon Schembri; Jo Hickey-Hall; Terhi Honkola; Alice Mitchell; Lucy Poole; Péter M Rácz; Sean G Roberts; Robert M Ross; Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun; Nicholas Evans; Fiona M Jordan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0283218

Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

Sam Passmore^* (Corresponding Author)
, Wolfgang Barth
, Simon J Greenhill
, Kyla Quinn
, Catherine Sheard
, Paraskevi Argyriou
, Joshua Birchall
, Claire Bowern
, Jasmine Calladine
, Angarika Deb
, Anouk Diederen
, Niklas P Metsäranta
, Luis Henrique Araujo
, Rhiannon Schembri
, Jo Hickey-Hall
, Terhi Honkola
, Alice Mitchell
, Lucy Poole
, Péter M Rácz
, Sean G Roberts

Robert M Ross, Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun, Nicholas Evans^* (Corresponding Author), Fiona M Jordan^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

5 Downloads (Pure)

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.

Original language	English
Article number	e0283218
Number of pages	19
Journal	PloS ONE
Volume	18
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283218
Publication status	Published - 24 May 2023
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

FMJ received funding from the European Research Council (Starting Grant VARIKIN ERC-Stg-639291). NE received funding from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Grant CE140100041). JB and FMJ received funding from the British Academy (International Partnership Mobility Grant 160281). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Keywords

Humans
Female
Male
Sexism
Anthropology
Databases, Factual
Family
Interdisciplinary Studies

Access to Document

10.1371/journal.pone.0283218Licence: CC BY

Passmore_etal_PLOSO_Kinbank_VOR
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Final published version, 1.25 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

Passmore, S., Barth, W., Greenhill, S. J., Quinn, K., Sheard, C., Argyriou, P., Birchall, J., Bowern, C., Calladine, J., Deb, A., Diederen, A., Metsäranta, N. P., Araujo, L. H., Schembri, R., Hickey-Hall, J., Honkola, T., Mitchell, A., Poole, L., Rácz, P. M., ... Jordan, F. M. (2023). Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology. PloS ONE, 18(5), Article e0283218. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283218

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 2023, 'Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology', PloS ONE, vol. 18, no. 5, e0283218. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283218

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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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note = "FMJ received funding from the European Research Council (Starting Grant VARIKIN ERC-Stg-639291). NE received funding from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Grant CE140100041). JB and FMJ received funding from the British Academy (International Partnership Mobility Grant 160281). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.",

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AU - Birchall, Joshua

AU - Bowern, Claire

AU - Calladine, Jasmine

AU - Deb, Angarika

AU - Diederen, Anouk

AU - Metsäranta, Niklas P

AU - Araujo, Luis Henrique

AU - Schembri, Rhiannon

AU - Hickey-Hall, Jo

AU - Honkola, Terhi

AU - Mitchell, Alice

AU - Poole, Lucy

AU - Rácz, Péter M

AU - Roberts, Sean G

AU - Ross, Robert M

AU - Thomas-Colquhoun, Ewan

AU - Evans, Nicholas

AU - Jordan, Fiona M

N1 - FMJ received funding from the European Research Council (Starting Grant VARIKIN ERC-Stg-639291). NE received funding from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Grant CE140100041). JB and FMJ received funding from the British Academy (International Partnership Mobility Grant 160281). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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N2 - 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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KW - Male

KW - Sexism

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VL - 18

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ER -

Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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