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 “intellec- tualist” 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.

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