A comparative study on Rajbanshi and English kinship terms

Abstract

This study entitled A Comparative Study on Rajbanshi and English Kinship Terms intends to find out the English and Rajbanshi kinship terms used to refer to various kinship relations and to compare and contrast the English and Rajbanshi kinship terms. This study followed survey research design. The population of the study consisted of the all native speaker of Rajbanshi language. Sixty native speaker of the Rajbanshi language were selected through the use of non-random purposive sampling procedure. This study followed interview and questionnaire as the research tool. The findings of the study shows that the Rajbanshi language was richer in kinship terms than the English kinships. There were few kinship relations and their corresponding addressive forms in the stock of English kinship vocabulary whereas,Rajbanshi had many more forms to refer to different kinds of kinship relations. Moreover, most of the relations are addressed by their names in the English language for e.g. brother, sister, cousin, nephew, son, daughter, niece brother in law, wife, husband and so on. On the other hand, the same relations are addressed by kinship terms in Rajbanshi e.g. dada, bhai, bai, bahanu, bhetija, bhegina, beta, betare, beti, betige, mai, maige, bhagina, bhaginage, mai, maige, bhasura. deara, son's/ daughter's name+ man and son's/ daughter's name+bau. This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter deals with the introduction of the topic which includes background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitations of the study, and operational definitions of the key terms. The second chapter covers review of the theoretical literature, empirical literature, implications of the review for the study and conceptual framework. The third chapter deals with the design and method of the study, study area, population, sample and sampling strategy, data collection tools and techniques, data collection procedures and data analysis and interpretation procedures. Likewise, the fourth chapter presents the result and discussion of findings. Fifth chapter deals with conclusions and recommendations followed by references and appendices.