Intro -- Contents -- Guide to Abbreviations and Orthography -- Chapter 1. Kinship, Semantics, and Linguistic Relativity -- Mopan Kinship -- Kinship Theory: Universal and Relative -- Linguistic Relativity -- Psychological Reality -- Abstract of Method -- Chapter 2. The Mopan Setting -- Ethnographic Setting -- The Ethnographer's Expectations and Experiences -- Chapter 3. The Meanings of Kinship Terms -- The Piagetian Definition Task -- The Question of Kinship -- The Tzik Relationship Terms of Mopan -- Chapter 4. Tzik and Kinship -- The Native Speaker's View -- Mopan Life Ich Naj ('in the House') -- Tzik Relationships and Their Socialization -- Chapter 5. Creating Tzik Relationships -- Ritually Established Relationships -- Acquiring Relationships through Marriage -- Performative Aspects of Tzik Appellation -- What Does Generation Mean? -- Chapter 6. Three Semantic Analyses and Their Consequences -- Semantic Analyses -- Acquisition Outcomes and Linguistic Relativity -- Chapter 7. Formal Findings -- Putting the Question -- Data Tabulation -- Data Analysis -- Chapter 8. Language, Thought, and Reality -- Review -- Some Explanatory Explorations -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W.

Based upon 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork among the Mopan Maya in Belize, Eve Danziger examines the semantic complexity of particular kinship terms used among Mopan women and children and shows that a culture-specific analysis of their terms is superior to other non-ethnographically-based methods. In doing so she contributes not only to theoretical semantics and the ethnography of that area, but to the cross-cultural study of child development and language acquisition.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.