Kinship Terms as Proof of Genetic Relationship

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to conduct a comparative study of peculiarities of kinship terms in the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Uzbek and Uyghur languages. The study of kinship nomenclature of the Turkic peoples makes it possible to draw a number of conclusions on the genetic kinship of languages, reveals the history of development and interrelations of these peoples, contributes to the creation of a comprehensive description of the lexical-semantic system of these Turkic languages. This article is the first experience of the comparative study of kinship terms in the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Uzbek and Uygur languages. A statistical comparison of the phonetic, nominal and semantic similarities of genetic features of kinship terms has been made. In the course of the study, it has been stated that each language has distinctive features and peculiarities, although they are included in the Turkic group. For the development of a typology of kinship systems, the authors chose to conduct the synchronous-comparative study of languages, which will apparently remain among the leading ones in the near future. Following it, the article fixes the kinship systems that currently exist in the Turkic languages (in particular, on the material of the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish and Uighur languages) and are available for direct observation. This method allowed the authors to analyze the actual material.