Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710. DOI: 10.22363/2312-9182-2018-22-3-701-710. PDF (open access)
Written in Russian.
This paper provides a brief overview of some publications by Anna Wierzbicka devoted to the study of kinship terms in different languages and cultures. The paper considers the approach of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), proposed by Wierzbicka for describing the semantics of kinship terms based on the use of lexical universals and shows the advantages of this approach in comparison with other methods of analysis. It demonstrates advantages of this method over other methods of semantic analysis, including overcoming eurocentrism tendencies in the analysis of kinship terms.
The paper contains Russian versions of some of the explications proposed in:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). New perspectives on kinship: Overcoming the Eurocentrism and scientism of kinship studies through lexical universals. In Nancy Bonvillain (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 62-79). New York: Routledge.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Back to ‘mother’ and ‘father’: Overcoming the eurocentrism of kinship studies through eight lexical universals. Current Anthropology, 57(4), 408-429.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). The meaning of kinship terms: A developmental and cross-linguistic perspective. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 19-62). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
