Brown Revised

Research TOC

WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?

Cecil H. Brown anguage can fool us. We may be inclined to view things named by the same word as being exactly the same, while Lin fact they almost never are. For example, all things called stones in English are rarely, if ever, identical in size, shape, and color, and the same is so of most natural objects that share the same name in any language. This is especially apparent with regard to the naming of plants and animals. All living things called birds, for example, are not identical since, obviously, there are many different kinds of bird. Similarly, all things called oaks are not the same since there are many different types of oak, including white oaks, black oaks, live oak, pin oaks, and so on. Of course, things named by the same term usually do have some- thing in common even if they are not identical—for example, all birds have feathers and wings and all oaks are trees that produce acorns. One crucial feature of human language is that it simplifies the naming of things by grouping them into classes or categories. Things named by the same word—but nonetheless not identical—are said to belong to the same linguistic class. Each member of a linguistic class is an exemplar of that grouping and may be denoted by the name of that class. Thus, a robin is an exemplar of the category “bird” and therefore can be called a bird; similarly, a white oak tree is an exemplar of the class “oak” and can be called an oak. Without such groupings, individual objects, like individual human beings, would have to have their own unique names. For example, a stone of a certain size, shape, and color would have one name and each and every other stone would also have another, individual name. This would result in serious language use problems. With every unique object and entity individually named, there would be an astronomical number of names for humans to recall. Such a situation would severely strain, if not incapacitate, human memory. In part because of such constraints on memory, humans group things into linguistic classes. I will examine here how living things are so grouped in languages. Typically, an exemplar of a class of plants or of a class of animals belongs to two or more linguistic categories. For example, for many speakers of English the species of tree known in scientific terminology as Quercus alba belongs to four different, but related, linguistic classes: white oak, oak, tree, and plant. Such categories are associated with one another in terms of the relationship “kind of”: Quercus alba is a kind of white oak; white oaks in turn are kinds of oak; oaks, kinds of tree; and trees, kinds of plant. Such classes are said to be related through hierarchic inclusion.

3 4RESEARCH FRONTIERS

This system of categorization resembles the scientific classification of plants and animals worked out by scientists over the last several hundred years. For example, in scientific (Latin) classification, the species Quercus alba belongs to the genus (is a kind of) Quercus. All members of the genus Quercus in turn belong to the family (are kinds of) Fagaceae, and so on. Usually people who are not specialists in biology do not know the scientific names of plants and animals or how the classes with which they are associated are related through hierarchic inclusion. However, most mature English speakers are familiar with categories such as oak, tree, and plant. Hence, we can distinguish two types of classificatory systems: (1) those commonly known to most people who speak the same language (or dialect), in other words, the folk; and (2) those known primarily to specialists in botany and zoology, in other words, scientists. This essay focuses on folk biological classification or, in other words, how the folk rather than scientists classify plants and animals. Folk biological classification is also called folk biological taxonomy (the word taxonomy refers to any system of classification, be it folk or scientific). Work undertaken by linguistic anthropologists such as Brent Berlin, Eugene Hunn, and myself over the past twenty years or so has shown that systems of folk biological classification or taxonomy display certain striking similarities across unrelated languages and cultures found in all parts of the world. Generalizations based on these similarities constitute principles of folk biological classification, some of which I outline below. In connection with these principles, I will discuss an important ongoing controversy concerning “utilitarianist” versus “intellectualist” explanations of folk biological taxonomy: Do plant and animal taxonomies arise solely in response to the usefulness of organisms for humans or simply because living things existing in peoples’ habitats naturally arouse human intellectual curiosity?

BACKGROUND

More than any other scholar, Brent Berlin has been responsible for fleshing out principles of folk biological classification through cross-language comparison.1 At the core of Berlin’s proposals is WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?5 the concept of ethnobiological rank. Each class within a folk biological taxonomy is associated with one of six such ranks. Ranks are systematically related to levels of hierarchic inclusion in folk taxonomies. Figure 1 presents a small fragment of an American English folk plant taxonomy that illustrates ethnobiological ranks. The most inclusive class of a folk taxonomy belongs to the “unique beginner” rank. For example, in Figure 1, the unique beginner class in American English folk botanical taxonomy is plant. The unique beginner is associated with the first level of hierarchic inclusion which has been designated “Level 0” by Berlin. He notes that unique beginners are often not labeled in languages. In other words, languages rarely have named biological classes comparable to English’s plant and animal. The next most inclusive rank is the “life-form,” which occurs at Level 1, illustrated by tree and plant in Figure 1. In American English plant has two botanical applications: (1) to botanical organisms in general (unique beginner); and (2) to most botanical objects exclusive of trees (life-form). Life-form

Figure 1 A Fragment of an American English Folk Plant Taxonomy Showing Hierarchic Levels and Ethnobiological Ranks Level: Classes: Rank: Level 0 plant (unique beginner)

Level 1 tree plant (life-forms)

Level 2 oak maple (generics)

Level 3 white oak black oak (specifics)

Level 4 swamp Northern (varietals) white oak white oak 6RESEARCH FRONTIERS classes always immediately include labeled classes at Level 2 (shown only for tree in Figure 1). According to Berlin, life-form taxa are usually few in number, never exceeding ten or so in taxonomies of any language. Classes of Level 2 that are immediately included in life-form categories (of Level 1) are affiliated with the “generic” rank as illustrated by oak and maple in Figure 1. Generic classes can also occur at Level 1 in folk taxonomies, but this is not depicted in Figure 1. Generic categories are by far the most numerous in folk biological taxonomies and, according to Berlin, constitute a level of abstraction that is psychologically basic or salient. Generic classes may or may not immediately include other labeled categories. If they do, classes immediately included in generics are associated with the “specific” rank, illustrated by white oak and black oak in Figure 1. Specific categories immediately included in Level 2 generics are found at Level 3. Like generics, specifics may or may not immediately include labeled categories. Classes immediately included in specific categories are affiliated with the “varietal” rank, illustrated by Northern white oak and swamp white oak occurring at Level 4 in Figure 2. Folk biological taxonomies rarely demonstrate more than a handful of varietal taxa. Finally, there is a sixth ethnobiological rank not illustrated in Figure 1. “Intermediate” classes occur between life-forms of Level 1 and generics of Level 2. An example in English is ever- green tree, which is immediately included in tree and immediately includes such generic classes as pine, fir, and cedar. Labeled intermediate categories are rare in most folk biological taxonomies. Biological classes of the same rank “exhibit nomenclatural, biological, taxonomic, and psychological characteristics” that distinguish them from classes affiliated with other ranks,2 some of which are noted above. One other feature, which involves nomenclature, or linguistic naming, requires some elaboration. Classes of the unique beginner, life-form, and generic ranks are typically labeled by primary lexemes. Primary lexemes are usually simple unitary words such as plant, animal, tree, fish, oak and trout. Labels for classes of the specific and varietal ranks are typically secondary lexemes. A secondary lexeme is composed of the term for the class in which the plant or animal it labels is immediately included and a modifier (e.g., white oak, a kind of oak; cutthroat trout, a kind of trout; and swamp white oak, a kind WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?7 of white oak). Secondary lexemes are also known as binomial labels. Since Berlin’s initial formulation of principles of folk biological classification, other cross-language patterns have become apparent. In 1984 I assembled evidence from a large number of globally distributed languages (in my book Language and Living Things) that showed that both plant and animal life-form categories are typically added to languages (lexically encoded) in more or less fixed sequences.3 These encoding sequences are described in Figures 2 and 3. These are interpreted as series of stages in the growth of plant and animal life-form vocabularies, one life-form class being added at each stage. In the plant sequence (Figure 2), Stage 1 languages lack terms for botanical life-form categories. Moving to Stage 2, a first botanical life-form class that is always “tree” is added to a language. “Tree” designates large plants of a particular locale whose parts are chiefly woody. At Stage 3, either “grerb” or “grass” is added as a second plant life-form. “Grerb” (grass +

Figure 2 Plant Life-Form Encoding Sequence

vine [grerb] grass bush [no life-forms] [tree] grerb [grass] bush vine

Stage: 1 2 3 4–6 Figure 3 Animal Life-Form Encoding Sequence

bird wug [no life-forms] fish snake mammal

Stage: 1 2–4 5–6 8RESEARCH FRONTIERS herb) denotes small plants of a particular locale whose parts are mainly leafy or herbaceous. At Stages 4–6 “vine,” “bush,” and “grass” or “grerb” are added but in no particular order. “Grass,” “vine,” and “bush” classes are more or less comparable in membership to American English categories with those names. In the animal encoding sequence (Figure 3), Stage 1 languages lack terms for zoological life-form categories. From Stages 2 through 4 “bird,” “fish,” and “snake” life-forms are added to languages, but in no particular order. These three are more or less comparable in content to American English classes of the same names. From Stages 5 through 6 “wug” and “mammal” are added but in no particular order. “Wug” is a category that encompasses small creatures other than those pertaining to “bird,” “fish,” and “snake” life-forms. “Wug” (worm + bug) always includes bugs (insects and other very small creatures such as spiders) and is extended to worms in some languages. “Mammal” designates a class that includes large creatures other than those pertaining to “bird,” “fish,” and “snake.” The class always extends to the scientifically classed mammals and often to other large creatures such as iguanas and crocodiles.4 In addition to these encoding regularities, size of life-form vocabularies is found to be positively correlated with societal scale. In other words, languages that lexically encode most or all of these life-form classes tend to be spoken by peoples who live in large-scale nation-state societies such as our own, while languages that lack them or encode only a few tend to be spoken by peoples who live in small-scale societies, such as hunter-gatherers. The positive correlation between number of life-form classes and societal scale indicates that, as societies increase in size and complexity over time, moving from a foraging way of life to small-scale agriculture and, ultimately, to nation-state society, life-form vocabularies tend to increase in size as well. This research suggests, then, that principles of folk biological classification may not be uniform across peoples whose societal arrangements are of different scales. Berlin’s original formulation of folk biological principles in the early 1970s was based on the comparative study of the folk biological taxonomy of seven or eight geographically dispersed traditional agrarian societies.5 At that time, few, if any, thorough studies of the folk taxonomies of hunting-and-gathering groups were available. Since then, scholars have assembled data from several foraging WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?9 groups. These studies (detailed below) indicate important differences between traditional agrarian peoples and hunter-gatherers concerning the linguistic organization of folk biological knowledge. In the mid-1980s I compiled data indicating differences between the folk taxonomies of hunter-gatherers and those of small-scale agrarian people.6 Folk taxonomies of foragers tend to differ from those of small-scale agriculturists in two major respects: (1) the number of labeled biological categories in evidence; and (2) the extent to which these classes are named through use of secondary lexemes (binomial labels) such as white oak and cutthroat trout. While hunting-and-gathering peoples typically possess sizable inventories of labeled biological classes, the inventories of small-scale agrarian groups tend to be substantially larger. Small-scale cultivators on the average have roughly five times as many labeled plant classes as hunting and gathering groups and nearly twice as many labeled animal categories. In addition, binomial labels (secondary lexemes) are very common in folk taxonomies of agrarian peoples and very rare in those of hunter-gatherers. On the average, only 3.6 percent of plant classes and only 7.6 percent of animal classes in taxonomies of foragers are labeled binomially. In striking contrast, small-scale agriculturalists on the average have binomial labels for 35 percent of all plant classes and for 31.6 percent of all animal classes. Similar findings have also been reported by Hunn and French.7 All of the above results indicate that folk biological taxonomies of hunter-gatherers look very different from those of agrarians. First, in addition to usually lacking rare unique beginner, varietal, and intermediate categories, forager taxonomies strongly tend to have few, if any, biological classes affiliated with life-form and specific ranks. While taxonomies of small-scale agrarian peoples closely follow Berlin’s original principles by showing several levels of hierarchic inclusion (see Figure 1), those of hunter-gatherers tend to have only one level, consisting almost entirely of generic classes. These findings indicate that, as societies increase in size and complexity, associated biological taxonomies tend to expand up and down, adding more inclusive life-form and less inclusive specific classes to preexisting generic categories.8 Findings also indicate that the sheer number of biological categories is increased significantly. 10 RESEARCH FRONTIERS

INTELLECTUALISM VERSUS UTILITARIANISM

Recently, Berlin has outlined two schools of thought regarding the nature of folk biological classification.9 He calls these schools the utilitarianists and the intellectualists. Proponents of utilitari- anism10 argue, in part, that folk classification of plants and animals is a means for human beings to adjust to their environments by classifying and assigning names only to those species that have important, practical consequences for human existence (for example, those species that are eaten, used as fuel, used as medi- cine, or used for construction). In contrast, proponents of intellec- tualism11 propose that biological organisms are categorized and named by folk independent of the practical uses species may possess for them. In the intellectualist view, folk biological knowledge is fundamentally intellectually motivated, entailing judg- ments of relative degrees of similarity and differences among species without regard to their usefulness for humans. Berlin is a member of the intellectualist camp. For example, he assembles evidence from two Jivaroan Indian groups (Peru) showing that folk naming and categorization of vertebrate animals in their habitats is very similar to how these animals are treated in scientific classification.12 He notes that Western scientific taxonomy is not based on knowledge of the cultural importance of these animals, but rather solely on similarities and differences among species. He concludes that since Jivaroan biological classifications accord closely with scientific classification, these systems, similarly, are not informed by utilitarianist considerations. Rather they are products of intellectualism. Clearly, Berlin and other intellectualist proponents would not deny that some biological categories are based on utilitarianist considerations. Most students of folk biological classification rec- ognize the existence in languages of “special-purpose” biological categories that are defined primarily in terms of the use of plants and animals. Such categories are contrasted with “general-purpose” classes whose memberships are determined solely in terms of the morphological characteristics (form, shape, color, etc.) of potential exemplars.13 A special-purpose class is one whose membership is based WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?11 primarily on some single functional feature of exemplars rather than on morphology. For example, inclusion of plants in the English category vegetable is determined primarily by their edibili- ty. Sometimes functional features are negative in nature; for instance, the membership of English weed extends to those plants totally lacking in use to humans and which interfere with the growth of other, more desirable plants. On the other hand, inclusion in general-purpose categories is based on the complex overall morphology of biological organisms; for example, birds are classed as such because they all share certain morphological features such as feathers, wings, beaks or bills, and characteristic legs. Principles of biological classification outlined by Berlin per- tain only to those categories generally recognized as general-purpose classes. Thus, special-purpose categories such as vegetable and weed do not fit into an analysis of folk biological classification in which ethnobiological ranks are recognized. Because such categories are of a different analytical order than that pertaining to general-purpose categories, they cannot be appropriately assigned to ethnobiological ranks such as life-form, generic, or specific. Indeed, Eugene Hunn takes issue with my study of the growth of folk biological life-form vocabularies, claiming that it inappropriately integrates special-purpose classes with general- purpose categories in developmental sequences (see Figures 2 and 3).14 In brief, he points out that categories such as “tree,” “wug,” and “mammal” are not true life-forms since, like special-purpose classes, they are not morphologically based in the same way as unambiguous life-forms such as “grass,” “bird,” “fish,” and “snake.” Clearly, this analysis is correct with respect to the classes “wug” and “mammal.” These categories are “resid- ual” groupings since they extend to those creatures “left over” after the lexical encoding of “fish,” “bird,” and “snake” by a language.15 Since members of these categories have only their “resid- ualness” in common, their inclusion in “wug” and “mammal” is not determined with respect to morphology and, hence, these groupings are not true life-form categories. A similar argument can be made regarding “grerb” in the plant sequence since it encompasses all those plants of a local habitat that are left over after the encoding of “tree.”16 Randall and Hunn develop additional utilitarianist arguments against the proposed life-form encoding sequences.17 For 12 RESEARCH FRONTIERS example, they argue that the Sinama (Philippines) category kayu, which I regard as a “tree” life-form in my book,18 is not in fact a true life-form category, but rather a special-purpose or utilitarian class extended to trees whose wood is regularly used for fuel or construction. I have responded to these and related arguments in depth elsewhere.19 Nevertheless, I am willing to concede here that so-called life-form categories of the encoding sequences (Figures 2 and 3) may in fact be a mixture of general-purpose and special-purpose classes. However, whatever the status of such categories, assembled cross-language data still strongly suggest that these classes are lexically encoded by languages in the orders described. This indicates that utilitarianist and intellectualist considerations may be more closely integrated in explanations of folk biological classification than previously thought. The debate concerning utilitarianism versus intellectualism has recently turned to the issue of explaining some of the differences between small-scale agrarian and hunter-gatherer biological taxonomies discussed above. I have proposed an explanation of these differences20 that Berlin characterizes as a utilitarianist argument.21 He responds to the latter with his own intellectualist approach. My explanation of why binomial terms (secondary lexemes) are considerably more prominent in folk biological taxonomies of small-scale agriculturalists than in those of hunter-gatherers is, in part, as follows.22 As noted above, my work and that of Hunn and French23 show that agrarian peoples name substantially more plants and animals in their environments than do hunter-gatherers. This indicates that farmers’ knowledge of plants and animals in their local environments is typically vastly greater than that of noncultivators. A major benefit of agriculture is that it supports human population densities many times greater than those that can be maintained by a foraging way of life. However, this benefit becomes a liability if broad crop failure occurs. In such an event, small-scale farmers must exploit wild plant and animal resources—as “famine foods”—more intensively than hunters and gatherers, since there are vastly more mouths to feed. Consequently, expanded knowledge of and interest in wild plants and animals in fact may be essential to the existence of small-scale agricultural groups. Foraging peoples, of course, are also subjected to fluctuations in available food resources. However, hunters and gatherers are seldom pressured to exploit wild plants and animals as intensive- WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?13 ly as small-scale agriculturalists under stress of broad crop failure. First, wild plants and animals are considerably less vulnera- ble than domesticated ones to hazards such as drought and dis- ease. Given this natural resistance, fluctuation in the food supply of foragers is rarely as severe as that of small-scale agriculturalists. Additionally, there are vastly fewer people to feed in foraging societies than in agricultural societies, so that even in times of scarcity no exceptional efforts need be undertaken by hunters and gatherers to acquire food. In sum, farmers’ greater knowledge of plants and animals in their local environments and their resulting larger biological taxonomies are linked, at least in part, to their reliance on “famine foods,” a situation that typically does not per- tain to foraging peoples. I have argued that the extent of use of binomial labels, such as white oak and cutthroat trout, is a function of the size of biological taxonomies—the larger the taxonomy, the greater the percentage of binomial labels used—since binomial terms (secondary lexemes) help humans remember the plants and animals they desig- nate.24 For example, the binomial construction white oak enhances the human ability to remember the tree it denotes (1) by calling attention to the general category of trees (i.e., oak) of which its referent is a member and (2) by signaling some special feature of the designated tree (i.e., a subtle whitish tint) that sets it apart from other members of the general category. Since folk biological taxonomies of small-scale agrarians are significantly larger than those of hunter-gatherers, there is a significantly greater strain on the memories of farmers to remember named biological objects than exists for foragers. Consequently, cultivators tend to reduce this strain by employing in their folk biological taxonomies a considerably greater percentage of binomial labels than hunter-gatherers do in theirs. Clearly, as Berlin observes, such arguments are utilitarianist rather than intellectualist in nature since they appeal to the usefulness to humans of ways of naming and classifying living things.25 In response to my arguments (and similar ones by Hunn and French),26 he offers the following “intellectualist” interpretation of differences between taxonomies of foragers and those of small-scale agriculturalists:

There seems to be little doubt that domestication led, and continues to lead, to the creation of folk specific taxa [i.e., classes labeled by secondary lexemes]. It also follows that a 14 RESEARCH FRONTIERS

cognitively qualitative difference manifests itself as part of the process of human beings’ conscious construction and manipulation of new and perceptually different forms of life [i.e., domesticated plants and animals]. Based on this qualitative difference in their interaction with living things . . . individuals [i.e., farmers] begin to take what might be called a second, more careful look at nature. People begin to be more systematic in the way they deal with the biological world. Regions of the biological space that they had known all along [i.e., when they were foragers] as undifferentiated generic gestalten are now looked upon in greater detail, per- haps even submitted to close study. Heretofore unnoticed objective differences are recognized explicitly for the first time. Two closely related but unimportant species, at one time unremarkable from a cognitive point of view, now become worthy of linguistic recognition [i.e., through the use of secondary lexemes]—as distinct parts of what was once a single folk generic [class]….27

While it is tempting to challenge points raised by Berlin, I am not inclined to argue that his intellectualist approach is without merit. Neither Berlin’s argument nor mine logically rules out either interpretation. Indeed, both accounts may constitute significant parts of an overall explanation of the observed phenome- non.

FINAL OBSERVATIONS

Although certainly unintentionally, Berlin suggests in his recent book how both intellectualist and utilitarianist approaches may combine to explain folk biological taxonomy.28 In his view—and in mine as well—plants and animals that are highly salient tend strongly to be named. However, it is not entirely clear what Berlin means by “salience.” On page 31 of his book, he equates salience with biological distinctiveness (i.e., a plant or animal in a local environment that is unique since there is no other similar plant or animal in the habitat), and on another page (p. 24) he equates it with cultural importance. Clearly, the salience of a plant or animal can relate to either or both of two factors: intrinsic distinctiveness and cultural impor- WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?15 tance. Some organisms are intrinsically salient for humans because our species is innately predisposed in some manner to perceive them as “standing out” or, in other words, as especially attention-getting or fetching, for example, by being biologically distinctive in a local environment or by right of possessing a bright color and/or a large size. Other organisms may be salient because they are culturally significant, or, in other words, because they are useful to people. In some instances, both intrinsic and cultural salience can combine to contribute to the overall high salience of an organism. If the naming of living things relates to their salience, and if salience is defined in terms of both intrinsic and cultural factors, then both intellectualist and utilitarianist factors are involved in the act of naming plants and animals. While Berlin does not, at least overtly, reach such a conclusion, students of folk biological taxonomy are nonetheless indebted to him for clearly articulating over the years important issues pertinent to this intriguing area of linguistic anthropology.

NOTES

1. Brent Berlin, “Speculations on the Growth of Ethnobotanical Nomenclature,” Language in Society 1 (1972): 51–86; Brent Berlin, “The Concept of Rank in Ethnobiological Classification: Some Evidence from Aguaruna Folk Botany,” American Ethnologist 3 (1976): 381–399; Brent Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Brent Berlin, Dennis E. Breedlove, and Peter H. Raven, “General Principles of Classification and Nomenclature in Folk Biology,” American Anthropologist 75 (1973): 214–242; Brent Berlin, Dennis E. Breedlove, and Peter H. Raven, Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification: An Introduction to the Botanical Ethnography of a Mayan-Speaking People of Highland Chiapas (New York: Academic Press, 1974). 2. Berlin, “The Concept of Rank in Ethnobiological Classification,” p. 381. 3. For why these encoding sequences may exist, see Cecil H. Brown, Language and Living Things: Uniformities in Folk 16 RESEARCH FRONTIERS

Classification and Naming (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984). 4. Ibid. 5. Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven, “General Principles of Classification and Nomenclature in Folk Biology.” 6. Cecil H. Brown, “Mode of Subsistence and Folk Biological Taxonomy,” Current Anthropology 26 (1985): 43–64; Cecil H. Brown, “The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature,” Current Anthropology 27 (1986): 1–19. 7. Eugene Hunn and David French, “Alternatives to Taxonomic Hierarchy: The Sahaptin Case,” Journal of Ethnobiology 3 (1984): 73–92. 8. Compare Berlin, “Speculations on the Growth of Ethnobotanical Nomenclature.” 9. Brent Berlin, “The Chicken and the Egg-Head Revisited: Further Evidence for the Intellectualist Bases of Ethnobiological Classification,” in Darrell A. Posey, William Leslie Overal, Charles R. Clement, Mark J. Plotkin, Elaine Elisabetsky, Clarice Novaes da Mota, and José Flávio Pessa de Barros, eds., Ethnobiology: Implications and Applications, Volume 1: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Ethnobiology (Belém, Brazil: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, 1988), pp. 19–33; Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification. 10. See, for example, Eugene Hunn, “The Utilitarian Factor in Folk Biological Classification,” American Anthropologist 84 (1982): 830–847. 11. See, for example, Scott Atran, Cognitive Foundations of Natural History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 12. Berlin, “The Chicken and the Egg-Head Revisited.” 13. Brent Berlin, Dennis E. Breedlove, and Peter H. Raven, “Folk Taxonomies and Biological Classification,” Science 154 (1966): 273–275; Ralph N. H. Bulmer, “Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg-Head?” in J. Pouillon and P. Maranda, eds., Mélanges offerts à Claude Lévi-Strauss à l’Occasion de son 60éme Anniversaire (The Hague: Mouton, 1970); Terence E. Hays, “Utilitarian/Adaptationist Explanations of Folk Biological Classification: Some Cautionary Notes,” Journal of Ethnobiology 2 (1982): 89–94; Terence E. Hays, “Ndumba Folk Biology and General Principles of Ethnobiological Classification and Nomenclature,” American Anthropologist 85 (1983): 592– 611; Hunn, “The Utilitarian Factor in Folk Biological Classification.” WHAT EXPLAINS FOLK PLANT AND ANIMAL TAXONOMIES?17

14. Ibid. 15. Brown, Language and Living Things. 16. Cecil H. Brown, “On the Botanical Life-Form ‘Tree,’” in Andrew Pawley, ed., Man and a Half: Essays in Pacific Anthropology and Ethnobiology in Honour of Ralph Bulmer (Auckland: The Polynesian Society, 1991), pp. 72–78. 17. Robert Randall and Eugene Hunn, “Do Life Forms Evolve or Do Uses for Life?” American Ethnologist 11 (1984): 329–349. 18. Brown, Language and Living Things. 19. Cecil H. Brown, “Life-Forms from the Perspective of Language and Living Things,” American Ethnologist 11 (1984): 589–593. 20. Brown, “Mode of Subsistence and Folk Biological Taxonomy.” 21. Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification. 22. Brown, “Mode of Subsistence and Folk Biological Taxonomy.” 23. Hunn and French, “Alternatives to Taxonomic Hierarchy.” 24. Brown, “Mode of Subsistence and Folk Biological Taxonomy.” 25. Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification. 26. Hunn and French, “Alternatives to Taxonomic Hierarchy.” 27. Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification, p. 286. 28. Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification.