Ethnotaxonomy
The term ethnotaxonomy refers either to that subdiscipline within
For example, in many West African languages, the perceptual world of color is classified into the principal categories "Red," "White," and "Black" (finer gradations being secondary). The range of wavelengths that an English-speaker calls blue would be a subcategory of "Black."[1] (See also Blue–green distinction in language)
The set of categories of familial relationships evinced by the ethnic group's
Conversely, an ethnotaxonomy such as the Sudanese kinship system or that used in ancient Rome, where no two relationships have the same denotation, may show much more granularity than the English system. Thus the relationship called aunt in English is not fundamental in Latin, but either amita "Father's Sister" or matertera "Mother's Sister" must be chosen. Latin and Sudanese are called a "descriptive systems," and Hawaiian is called a "classificatory" system, but this terminology is English-centered (see Lewis H. Morgan), the difference being one of degree, rather than kind.
Categories of plants, "Useful" and "Harmful," etc., are yet another well-known example. Indeed, in recent years there has been a vogue usage of the term ethnotaxonomy limiting it to
Animal folk taxonomy in the Kalam language of Papua New Guinea has been extensively studied by Ralph Bulmer and others.[3]
See also
References
- ^ Richard S. Cook; Paul Kay; Teryy Regier (2005). "Universal Foci and Varying Boundaries in Linguistic Color Categories" (Conference paper). Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
- ^ "ABSTRACTS, Spring/Summer: 24(1)". www.sas.upenn.edu. Archived from the original on 30 April 2006. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
- ^ Bulmer, RNH (1975). Kalam Classification Of Reptiles And Fishes Archived 2020-12-01 at the Wayback Machine.
Further reading
- Taylor, Paul Michael (1990). "The Folk Biology of the Tobelo People: A Study in Folk Classification". Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology (34). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press: 1–187. hdl:10088/1341.