The child's knowledge of English kin terms

Abstract

Five groups of subjects (three-, four-, five-, and six-year-olds as well as adults) with four males and four females per group were interviewed and questioned with respect to their knowledge of twelve English kin terms: mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, wife, husband, aunt, uncle, grandmother, and grandfather. A questionnaire, which in the case of the children was filled out by their parents, helped deter mine rank orderings for the twelve terms with respect to the estimated relative frequency subjects had: (1) spent with each of the relations; (2) heard the words spoken; and (3) spoken the words. Analyses of the data revealed that: (1) younger children tended to discuss the words in terms of particular people and with reference to personal experience, whereas older children and adults talked in a more general way; (2) the tendency to produce relational definitions of the kin terms was neg ligible in the preschool years and became increasingly more frequent thereafter; (3) although with age definitions of the kin terms became more accurate, even the definitions of adults were not typically stated in terms of reciprocity; (4) experience as assessed by each of the three sets of parental rankings was successful in predicting both the quality of definitions provided by the children and the order of acquisition of the kin terms, whereas measures of semantic complexity were less successful in doing so.