A Comparative Linguistic Study of the English and Thami Kinship Terms

Abstract

This research work is related to the kinship terms of the English and ThamiLanguages. It is a comparative study of kinship relations of these languages. Itstudies both consanguineal and affinal relations from the point of view of maleand female ego in the English and Thami languages. The objectives of this studywere to determine Thami kinship terms used to refer to various kinship relationsand to find out similarities and differences between them. Two sets ofquestionnaire were prepared for data collection. Population ofthe study consisted of 100 informants: 50 Thami native speakers from Lapilangand 50 from Sundrawati V.D.Cs of Dolakha district for the information of Thamikinship terms. Besides, limited number of native speakers of English was taken forthe information of English kinship terms. The findings are that Thami language is richer than English language interms of kinship terms. Thami and English kinship terms have the relationships ofMono Thami vs. Multi Thami. This study has four chapters. Each of them has been divided in to varioussub-chapters. The first chapter consists of introduction with general backgruound, reviewof related literature, objectives of the study, significance of the study anddefinitions of the specific terms. The second chapter includes methodology consisting of sources of data,sampling population and sampling procedure, research tools, process of datacollection and limitation of the study. The third chapter deals with analysis and interpretation of the collected datafor the study. The comparison has been made mainly between kinship terms usedin English and Thami language. The fourth chapter presents the major findings and providesrecommendations and pedagogical implications based on the analysis andinterpretation of the data.