While global databases facilitate the study of kinship terminology, phylogenetic studies directly testing the hypothesis find little evidence that kinship terminology co-evolves with social structures like marriage organization or residence rules.
The evidence we hold leans evenly split
official record 3x · fact-check 2x · hedged 1x · crowd & reference 1x
Papers [6] and [10] provide data and computational models showing the diversity and learning of kinship terms globally, supporting the study of kinship structures. However, papers [7] and [9] specifically test whether kinship terminologies co-evolve with social structures and find limited or no support for this hypothesis, creating a contested landscape regarding the deterministic link between social structure and kinship terminology.