1. Kinship Systems, Linguistic Classification, and Language Typology Contributing to the Modern Human Origins Debate

2. World Wide Kin Terminological Database, with corresponding bibliography 2500 languages www.kinshipstudies.org

3. Task I REORIENT the historical typology from the intragenerational merging/bifurcation of genealogical lines to the merging/bifurcation of generational levels; from cousin to sibling terms; from substantial categories (parent, sibling, spouse) to relational components (relative age, relative sex, polarity); from genealogical semantics to syntactic, morphological, and phonetic patterning; from the binaries of consanguinity and affinity to the complexities of consanguinity, affinity, adoption, and mortality

4. Kinship terminologies - Types

5. Vertical Transformations

6. Task II BRIDGE the gap between the historical typology of kinship terminologies and linguistic typology. Johanna Nichols’s (1992) “population linguistics approach” has identified two major areas of the world, with the dominance of either head-marking or dependent marking languages. This corresponds closely to Morgan’s (1871) division of world kinship systems into “classificatory” and “descriptive.”

7. Task III BRIDGE the gap between the historical typology of kinship terminologies and etymological studies within specific language families. Semantic typologies derived from the study of kinship terminologies may assist linguists in identifying hidden etymological connections, and allow them to work out from these etymological suggestions to new phonetic laws.

8. Indo-European *mer- ‘brother; affine’ IE *bhrātēr/bhreHtēr ‘ brother ’ Lith mart ì ‘ bride, young woman, daughter-in-law, female affine ’ Germ *brūdi- ‘ bride ’ (< IE *mrūti-) Alb shem ë r ‘ co-wife, concubine, female rival ’ (< OAlb shem ë r ë < *sm- mer-yā ‘ co-wife ’ or *sub- marīta) Latv m á r š a ‘ brother ’ s wife ’ Lat maritus ‘ husband ’

9. Task IV INTEGRATE the historical typology of kinship terminologies with the genetic classifications of human languages and to test the extant proposals for macrophyla

10. Task V COMPARE the historical typology of kinship terminologies with the results recently obtained in population genetics from mtDNA and the Y chromosome

11. Task VI CONSTRUCT a multidisciplinary model of research into modern human origins and ancient human dispersals, which takes into account evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and population genetics

12. Linguistic diversity - North America

13. Linguistic diversity - South America

14. Linguistic diversity - AFRICA

15. Mitochondrial DNA diversity - America

16. Y Chromosome - Gene Tree

17. Phylogeny of Sibling Sets