Kinship Loanwords in the Turkic Languages

Abstract

Turkic kinship terminologies represent a mixture of words of native and foreign origin, and the proportion of loanwords reflects the degree of linguistic and cultural interference between the Turkic and other Eurasian languages. As the intensity of socio-cultural relations between languages and communities increases, the proportion of loanwords in kinship vocabulary also increases. This paper provides an overview of historical, linguistic, and cultural aspects of kinship loanwords in the Turkic languages.The paper covers the following eight kinds of kin types in the Turkic languages: (1) parents, (2) siblings, (3) cousins, (4) children, (5) grandparents, (6) uncles/aunts, (7) nephews/nieces, (8) grandchildren. Due to the fact that in the conventional Turkic system of kinship, which is especially well-represented in pre-modern Turkic languages, two or three of these kins may be merged in one single term on the basis of generation and lineage branch, kinship loanwords examined are ordered by this criterion.