Rokonértelmje

Rokonértelmje is a term used in linguistic anthropology and typology to denote the semantic field of kinship terms within a language or language community. It covers how a language encodes relationships such as generation, gender, and sibship, as well as affinal relations, through its kin terms. The rokonértelmje of a language shapes how speakers refer to relatives in speech and writing and interacts with social organization and cultural norms.

Origin and usage: The term rokonértelmje appears to be formed from Hungarian rokon 'relative' and értelem 'meaning', with the suffix -je used as a nominalizing or referential marker. In scholarly contexts, it is a label for a descriptive concept rather than a term in ordinary language.

Cross-linguistic variation: Some languages have a large, finely differentiated kinship lexicon, distinguishing terms such as father's brother and mother's sister, while others use a smaller set of terms. The rokonértelmje of a language is often linked to cultural patterns such as descent, residence, and marriage, but there is substantial variation within and across language groups.

Methods and applications: Researchers document rokonértelmje through fieldwork, elicitation, and corpus analysis, then compare data across languages or over time. The concept informs language documentation, anthropology, and the study of how kinship is encoded in discourse and social practice.