A Unique Language Fossil

The Baima people live in the counties of Pingwu, Songpan and Nanping in Sichuan Province, and in Wenxian County in Gansu Province in China. They do not have a written script of their own language. The Baima language, whose status is still under dispute, is an endangered language. There is great significance of studying the Baima kinship terms.The study of this thesis is from an anthropolinguistic perspective. It makes an analysis of the Baima kinship terms on the basis of the information and data collected during the fieldwork around two months.After introducing research background and reviewing the related literature, the author concludes that up to now there has been no detailed and systematic study on the Baima kinship terms carried out by either Chinese or foreign scholars and no scholarly works on the Baima kinship terms from an anthropolinguistic perspective have been found.This thesis first discusses the Baima kinship terminology system. It discusses the features of the Baima kinship terms that are first and foremost based on the large family unit and the clan. It points out that the Baima people more or less group their kin according to the eight criteria deduced by Kroeber and the nineth criterion by Lowie. It also explores the nature of the Baima kinship terminology system. The Baima kinship terms constitute the Baima kinship terminology system that provides a means of classifyingrelationships with other people for every person in Baima society. Based on the first ascending generational terminology the Baima kinship terminology falls into bifurcate collateral category. On the basis of cousin terminology it is a complex mixture of Sudanese and Hawaiian kinship systems.Secondly, fourteen semantic features are selected to make a componential analysis of the Baima kinship terms. This is an essential aspect in describing and analyzing the Baima kinship terms. Although the roles of the fourteen semantic features in the analysis of the Baima kinship terms are different, the analysis of the semantic features of the terms can lead to some important conclusions about the Baima kinship structure and classification. In this way the Baima kinship terms are differentiated with different combinations and different numbers of semantic features. This analysis helps discover the underlying semantic differences among the terms and help determine what is culturally significant in Baima society and how their members structure their experience linguistically.Another essential aspect in describing and analyzing the Baima kinship terms is to refer to the cultural elements behind these terms. Finally this thesis examines the connections between the Baima kinship terms and the Baima culture. These terms are the product of complex cultural growth and the linguistic fossils of the Baima history and culture. They have deep cultural connotations and reflect Baima consanguine marriage and cross-cousin marriage. Contact-induced changes in the Baima kinship terms are further discussed. In recent years because of the present language education in the Baima area, the influence of media on the Baima people and the development of tourism in the Baima area, more and more Baima people have become bilinguals. There have emerged some Chinese loanwords in the Baima kinship terms. These loanwords are classified into different types and their internal and external factors are analyzed.This thesis aims at helping people better understand the Baima kinshipterms, the Baima language and Baima culture.