Neki aspekti hrvatske terminologije srodstva
Some Aspects of the Croatian Kinship Terminology

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents an attempt to analyze some aspects of kinship terminology based on ethnographic literature and kinship terminology in the standard Croatian language, compared with features of kinship terminology presented in anthropological literature. There is an examination of a possibility to define the Croatian kinship terminology as a descriptive system of kinship terminology, that is as such a system in which all persons included in kinship are distinguished by a specific term category. The analysis indicates that such a definition is not conceivable because the very distinction between descriptive and classificatory systems is founded on a scientist’s subjective point of view. Although the existing categories of the Croatian kinship terminology do not cover all types and degrees of kinship their quantity as well as the real usage of some kinship terms make the Croatian kinship terminology one of the systems that might be called less classificatory. However, for such a conclusion more comparative studies with other systems of kinship terminology is needed, which is not carried out in this paper. The comparison between normative systems on the one hand and established and used terms in ethnographic monographs on the other hand shows tendencies of the terminology in use to decrease in term number, that is a tendency toward a more classificatory system.

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