Sample entries:hotamti vi. p.pl. get stretched out.-Itupko kaway 'uyit hotamtiqw tiikive'ytani, When the watermelons stretch (with vines on the ground), my younger brother will sponsor a dance. paapu part.[2] from now on, from this time on.-Nu' teevep taya 'iwtaqw nungwupaapu ipono hin 'ur tuyva, F ve been laughing so long my stomach is now starting to hurt.

There are semantic universals in the domain of color; i.e. there are constraints on the types of possible basic color lexicons. These constraints arise from the structure and function of the visual system. Thus in the case of color at least, rather than language determining perception (cf. Sapir and Whorf), it is perception that determines language.

In the introduction we stated two frequently encountered a priori arguments against the variable rule methodology and attempted to refute them. The first rejects the variable rule methodology – and by implication any study of comparable data – on the grounds that variable rules govern token frequencies while generative grammar does not countenance token frequencies. We agree that variable rules are not generative rules of a new sort but an entirely different kind of logical object and that generative grammar indeed does not countenance token frequencies. But we are convinced by empirical work conducted within the variable rule paradigm that token frequencies often display clear patterns and that moreover some knowledge of these patterns forms part of the linguistic abilities of speakers. We conclude that, whatever the drawbacks of the variable rule formalism, studies employing variable rules have shown regularities in linguistic behavior that point to a serious lack in the generative paradigm, narrowly defined.A second line of argument against variable rules which we rejected was based on assumptions about human psychology and about probability theory. The assumption that human beings cannot assess probabilities and behave in accord with them in a natural and unconscious manner appears to be supported by no empirical evidence and does not seem to us plausible a priori. Moreover, experimental evidence to the contrary exists. The argument to probability theory was that a speaker would have to have an internal counting device to keep track of the relative frequencies of linguistic variants that he had heard from his own or other lips in order to behave in accordance with variable rules. But this would require a kind of probability theory that would differ in remarkable and unspecified ways from ordinary probability theory, since the paradigmatic empirical examples of the familiar theory, such as coins, dice, decks of cards, and so on, are not possessed of memories.

Quantitative analysis of descent and marriage practices and kinship term applications among the Alyawara tribe of Central Australia reveals that traditional Radcliffe‐Brownian models of Kariera and Aranda (section and subsection) systems fit the Alyawara in superficial ways but are entirely inappropriate in more fundamental ways. The problems that we encountered in analyzing the data suggest that the Radcliffe‐Brownian models contain basic and fatal flaws. The alternative model that we suggest for the Alyawara is a three‐dimensional structure that incorporates age relations as one of its principal features. Our proposed model is a double helix.

Theories of incest tabus usually stress the psychosocial advantages of marriage regulation. But marriage regulation may produce delays in mating and thus loss of fertility to a population. Computer microsimulation experiments measure the amount of fertility that must be achieved outside a normatively specified marriage system in order to keep population constant. This amount varies directly with scope of tabu and inversely with population size. For populations of hundreds it is negligible, but for populations of dozens it can be very great. In the latter, flexibility of marital arrangements may permit maintenance of fertility without repeated revision of rules of marriage.