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Glossary of Terms Used in My Lectures
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Bilateral Descent A system of tracing relatedness through both males and females. Typically, this results in overlapping kinship reckoning known as a kindred in which the only individuals who share exactly the same relatives are full siblings. The advantage of such a system is that one can trace a bilateral connection to distant individuals. The disadvantage is that such links are often weak and multiple. It is not easy to form corporate groups based upon a kindred. However, there are some ancestor-focussed bilateral descent groups which can be corporate; for example, ropes.
Bound Morpheme A unit of linguistic structure which has meaning only when associated with a free morpheme. It may precede the free morpheme (a prefix), it may be inserted into the free morpheme (an infix), or it may follow the free morpheme (a suffix).
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