ignored or belittled, but must be faced and some explanation alternative to that of Morgan provided.
This attempt was made four years ago by Professor Kroeber,[1] of the University of California. The line he takes is absolutely to reject the view common to both Morgan and McLennan that the nature of the classificatory system has been determined by social conditions. He explicitly rejects the view that the mode of using terms of relationship depends on social causes, and puts forward as the alternative that they are conditioned by causes purely linguistic and psychological.
It is not quite easy to understand what is meant by the linguistic causation of terms of relationship. In the summary at the end of his paper Kroeber concludes that "they (terms of relationship) are determined primarily by language." Terms of relationship, however, are elements of language, so that Kroeber's proposition is that elements of language are determined primarily by language. In so far as this proposition has any meaning, it must be that, in the process of seeking the origin of linguistic phenomena, it is our business to ignore any but linguistic facts. It would follow that the student of the subject should seek the antecedents of linguistic phenomena in other linguistic phenomena, and put on one side as not germane to his task all reference to the objects and relations which the words denote and connote.
Professor Kroeber's alternative proposition is
- ↑ Journ. Roy. Anth. Inst., 1909, xxxix, 77.
