Most languages have some expressions to refer to family members (e.g., those referring to ‘father,’ ‘brother,’ ‘uncle,’ etc.). In this paper, we will provide an analysis of Japanese and Chinese kinship terms, under a framework whose representational system has an ontological nature. It will be shown that this framework is effective not only in figuring out similarities and differences among the...

A key change in the evolution of our species from a common ancestor with the chimpanzees was the shift to a field of social interaction no longer dependent upon face-to-face interaction for the maintenance of social coherency. Our hunter-gatherers ancestors made a radical shift to social relations based on a culturally constructed system of kinship relations. Unlike biological kinship that refl...