This book presents the first computer program, called KINSHIP,
automating the task of componential analysis of kinship
vocabularies. KINSHIP accepts as input the kin terms of a language
with their attendant kin types and can produce all alternative
componential models of a kinship system, including the most
parsimonious one, using the minimum number of dimensions and
components in a kin term definition. A further simplicity
constraint ensures the coordination between kin term definitions.
Inspecting previous practices of the method of componential
analysis reveals two basic problems in published models: (1) the
commonly occurring inconsistency of componential models (violating
necessity or sufficiency conditions of kin term definitions), (2)
the huge number of alternative componential models. The application
of KINSHIP with its simplicity constraints successfully solves both
these problems. The utility of the program is illustrated on
complete data sets from more than a dozen languages from
Indo-European and non-Indo-European origin.
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