Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:03:34.947Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The acquisition of social deixis: children's usages of ‘kin’ terms in Maharashtra, India*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Anthony T. Carter
Anthony T. Carter
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In relatively unstructured interviews, Maratha and Brahmin children in Maharashtra, India, are asked to identify and to speak about household members, relatives, friends, and neighbours. It is argued that characteristic features of the usages and definitions of so-called ‘kin’ terms of young children as compared to those of adults reflect not only an incomplete grasp of the adult system of kinship reference, but also a quite accurate understanding of the deictic system of address in which kinship per se plays at most a peripheral role. It is further argued that, following Silverstein and Levinson, pragmatic rules of use play a major role in this address system and that, pace Piaget and others, these rules are acquired by a form of observational learning which requires that children be able to take another's point of view.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 1984 , pp. 179 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bean, S. S. (1975). Referential and indexical meanings ot amma in Kannada: mother, woman, goddess, pox and help. JAnthRes 31. 313–30.Google Scholar
Bean, S. S. (1978). Symbolic and pragmatic semantics: a Kannada system of address. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. In Goody, E. (ed.), Questions and politeness. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. & Ford, M. (1961). Address in American English. JAbSocPsychol 62. 375–85.Google Scholar
Brown, R. & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Sebeok, T. (ed.), Style in language. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1974). The organization of early skilled action. In Richards, M. P. M. (ed.), The integration of a child into a social world. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1975). The ontogenesis of speech acts. JChLang 2. 1–19.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1976). Nature and uses of immaturity. In Bruner, J.Jolly, A. & Sylva, K. (eds), Play. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1978). Learning how to do things with words. In Bruner, J. & Garton, A. (eds), Human growth and development. London: O.U.P.Google Scholar
Burling, R. (1970). American kinship terms once more. SWJA 26. 15–24.Google Scholar
Carter, A. T. (1971). Household partition in rural western Maharashtra. Paper presented at 70th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Carter, A. T. (1974 a). Elite politics in rural India. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Carter, A. T. (1974 b). A comparative analysis of systems of kinship and marriage in South Asia. Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 29–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, A. T. (1984). Kintype classification and concepts of relatedness in South Asia. AmEthnog.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, A. T. (1982). Household histories. Paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Conference on Households: changing form and function, Seven Springs Conference Center,Mount Kisco,New York.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. & Tavuchis, N. (1977). Kids and kin: children's understanding of American kin terms. JChLang 3. 63–80.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1978). From gesture to word: on the natural history of deixis in language acquisition. In Bruner, J. & Garton, A. (eds), Human growth and development. London: O.U.P.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Linguistic politeness axes: speaker–addressee, speaker–referent, speaker–bystander. Pragmatics microfiche 1. 7. A3–B1.Google Scholar
Danziger, K. (1957). The child's understanding of kinship terms: a study in the development of relational concepts. JGenetPsychol 91. 213–31.Google ScholarPubMed
Dasen, P. R. (1977). Introduction. In Dasen, P. (ed.), Piagetian psychology. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Deleury, G. A. (1960). The cult of Vithoba. Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.Google Scholar
Denzin, N. K. (1977). Childhood socialization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Dore, J., Gearhart, M. & Newman, D. (1978). The structure of nursery school conversation. In Nelson, K. (ed.), Children's language, Vol. 1. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Elkind, D. (1964). Children's conceptions of brother and sister: Piaget replication study V. JGenetPsychol 100. 120–36.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. & Mitchell-Kernan, C. (eds). (1977). Child discourse. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. (1971). Towards a theory of deixis. Working papers in linguistics. Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. (1957). Malinowski and the study of kinship. In Firth, R. (ed.), Man and culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Gearing, F. O. (1977). Anthropology and education. In Honigman, J. (ed.), Handbook of social and cultural anthropology. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Geoghegan, W. (1970). A theory of marking rules. Working Paper 37, Language Behavior Research Laboratory, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Geoghegan, W. (1971). Information processing systems in culture. In Kay, P. (ed), Explorations in mathematical anthropology. Cambridge, Mass.M.I.T.Google Scholar
Geoghegan, W. (1973). Natural Information Processing Rules. Monograph 3, Language Behavior Research Laboratory, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P. M. & Childs, C. P. (1977). Understanding sibling concepts: a developmental study in kin terms in Zinacantan. In Dasen, P. (ed.), Piagetian psychology. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P., Reich, L. & Olver, R. (1966). On culture and equivalence. II. In Bruner, J. et al. , Studies in cognitive growth. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Haviland, S. E. & Clark, E. (1974). ‘This man's father is my father's son’: a study of the acquisition of English kin terms. JChLang 1. 1–25Google Scholar
Lashley, K. S. (1951). The problem of serial order in behavior. In Jeffress, L. S. (ed), Cerebral mechanisms in behavior. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Leach, E. R. (1958). Concerning Trobriand clans and the kinship category tabu. In Goody, J. (ed.), The developmental cycle in domestic groups. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
LeVine, R. A. & Price-Williams, D. R. (1974). Children's kinship concepts: cognitive development and early experience among the Hausa. Ethnology 17. 25–44.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1977). Social deixis in a Tamil village. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Minturn, L. & Hitchcock, J. (1963). The Rajputs of Khalapur, India. In Whiting, B. (ed.), Sex cultures: studies of child-rearing. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Molesworth, J. T., Candy, G. & Candy, T. (1857). A dictionary, Marathi and English (2nd edition). Bombay: Education Society Press.Google Scholar
Needham, R. (1971 a). Introduction. In Needham, R. (ed.), Rethinking kinship and marriage. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Needham, R. (1971 b). Remarks on the analysis of kinship and marriage. In Needham, R. (ed.), Rethinking kinship and marriage. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1974). Concept, word and sentence: interrelations in acquisition and development. Psych Rev 81. 267–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. (eds). (1979). Developmental pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Parisi, D. & Antinucci, F. (1970). Lexical competence. In d'Arcais, G. B. Flores. & Levelt, W. J. M. (eds), Advances in psycholinguistics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1928). Judgement and reasoning in the child. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Price-Williams, D., Hammond, O., Edgerton, C. & Walker, M. (1977). Kinship concepts among rural Hawaiian children. In Dasen, P. (ed.), Piagetian psychology. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Richards, M. P. M. (1974). The integration of a child into a social world. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Scheffler, H. W. (1972). Kinship semantics. In Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 1. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews.Google Scholar
Scheffler, H. W. & Lounsbury, F. G. (1971). A study in structural semantics: the Siriono kinship system. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Schneider, D. M. (1968). American kinship: a cultural account. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1976). Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In Basso, K. & Selby, H. (eds), Meaning in anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair de Zwart, H. (1973). Language acquisition and cognitive development. In Moore, T. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Speier, M. R. (1969). The organization of talk and socialization practices in family household interaction. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Tyler, S. A. (1969). Introduction. In Tyler, S. A., Cognitive anthropology. New York:Holt, Rinehart, Winston.Google Scholar
Vatuk, S. (1982). Forms of address in the North Indian family. In Ostor, A., Fruzzetti, L. & Barnett, S. (eds), Concepts of person. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wells, G. (1981). Learning through interaction. Cambridge: C.U.P.CrossRefGoogle Scholar