His research on Oceanic kinship systems is directed towards the integration of comparative ethnographic and linguistic data. Recent publications include “Linguistic Evidence for Primogeniture and Ranking in Proto-Oceanic Society” (Oceanic Linguistics 1999) and “Reconstructing Ancestral Oceanic Society” (Asian Perspectives 1999). This research is part of a larger project on the structure and evolution of human kinship systems, supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation.