A Comparative Study of English and doteli Kinship Terms

Abstract

The kinship relation is a family relationship through blood ormarriage. It is one of the main organizing principles of human society.Kinship systems are the major areas of anthropological study foranthropologists. In the present study, the researcher has presenteddifferent kinship relations and corresponding terms to symbolize therelations.The main objectives of this studywere to determine Englishand Doteli kinship terms and to compare and contrast those terms witheach other. To fulfill theobjectives, the researcher collected data fromDoteli speakers of Doti district for Doteli kinship terms. He also collectedthe data from the native speakers of theEnglish languageavailable inKathmandu valley for English kinship terms. The total samplingpopulation was eight respondents of both languages. Out of them, sixtyspeakers were from Doteli dialect and twentyfromtheEnglish language.The data were collected by the help of a pre-set questionnaire andinterview using judgemental non-random sampling procedure. Theresearcher also consulted different books, journals and previous theses forthe secondary sources of data. The major findings of the study are that Doteli dialect is rich interms of kinship terms in comparison to the English language. The systemof Doteli kinship terms and English kinship terms has the relationship ofmono-Doteli vs multi-English and mono-English vs multi-Doteli. Inaddition to this, there are differences between one to onecorrespondencerelationship of the appellative forms to signify the same relation of theparticular languages. The study includes four chapters. Each chapter has been dividedinto various sub chapters.Chapter one consists of introduction with general background,review of the related literature, objectives of the study, significance of thestudy and the definition of the specific terms. Chapter two deals with methodology of research work. It is sub-divided into sources of data, research tools, population of the study andsampling procedures, research tools, process of data collection andlimitations of the study. Chapter three presents analysis and interpretation of the collecteddata for the study. The comparison has been made mainly between thekinship terms used in English and Doteli for appellative use andaddressive use. Chapter four of this thesis presents the findings and somerecommendations based on the analysis and interpretation of the data.