[Lexicog] palm trees

Fri May 22 04:31:15 UTC 2009

Let me just add that my hope is to develop a method for eliciting words
using the emic domains of a language that is more efficient than DDP. DDP
might be useful for cross-linguistic comparison, just as transcribing words
phonetically has usefulness when comparing sound systems. But no one wants
phonetic orthographies. If we had a lot of dictionaries that were all
classified using the DDP list of domains, we could compare the "same" domain
in all of the languages. However I believe we would learn a lot more from
comparing emic systems of semantic domains and networks of lexical
relations. So I'm not convinced that a standardized list of domains like DDP
is the best we can do. It may be the best we have right now, but surely we
can do better.

Ron Moe

  _____  

From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Leman
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 8:04 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] palm trees

Thanks, Greg. I understand what you are saying about using your three
different kinds of semantic taxonomies for displaying lexical data and
probably also as heuristics (discovery procedures). I may be missing
something, but I still do not understand how we could call a display of the
words of a language its lexicon if that display was not organized according
to the semantic domains of that language and the cultural context and
worldview of its speakers.

I think that Ron's DDP approach is one of the most helpful workshop and
heuristic programs to come along. But it and no other semantic taxonomies
developed by outside researchers can ever really account for the indigenous
semantic categories. We have to discover those using methods which allow
native speakers, unbiased by outside educational systems, to try to express
how they divide up the lexical universe. Dick Watson's post is one good
methodology for getting at those emic semantic taxonomies.

BTW, Ron recognizes, as he has stated in his most recent message and he and
I have had email exchanges on this point in the past, that the DDP program
is a good start. I'd stay it's far better than good. It represents a great
deal of careful thinking by someone who has done a lot of lexical work with
speakers in workshops in different parts of the world. It simply has the
limitations that any "external" program will have for displaying semantic
domains of any particular language.

Yes, there are semantic universals. I don't know how many universals there
are re: semantic taxonomies. It may be that there are universals, but that
we have to describe them using dependency relationships or something like
that, such as is done by some people working with language typologies today
(e.g. If a clause of a language has an Object, that Object will usually
appear in such-and-such a position relative to the Verb).

Ultimately, we need to do a lot more work on ethnosemantics based on
culturally-sensitive cognitive science. After all, lexical relationships
presumably represent relationships among mental concepts of people who have
various worldviews and artifacts within their worlds.

So, in summary, Greg, I understand what you are saying. I could even accept,
hmm, perhaps (!), the validity of some lexical data of some language
published for English speakers using semantic domains that English speakers
use. But the publication should make it very, very clear that those semantic
domains are only there as a helpful device for English speakers to access
information about semantic domains they are curious about. They need to
understand that if they consider a palm to be a tree and find a palm in the
tree category (even if the language does not have a generic word for tree),
that does not mean that the palm is a tree in the lexicon that they are
viewing in publication. My own preference would be to limit the
misunderstanding that can result from squeezing round and other shaped and
colored objects into square holes. I've seen this done terribly with
"dictionaries" published recently for a variety of language by a man (Philip
M. Parker; googling on his name is an interesting exercise if one is
interested in how not to do lexicography) who squeezed the words of every
language (none of which he knew and so there were many errors) into an
English thesaurus model. Several of us linguists have had to contact him and
try to help him understand how distorted and inaccurate his books are. And
they have even been demeaning to the native speakers of languages, as for
instance, if he would force a vernacular word for "weed" into the thesaurus
category for mind-altering substances. That very kind of thing happened for
one Native American language and those people were highly offended by their
language was misrepresented.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

I am sorry if my reply seems inane, but one purpose of a semantic taxonomy
is to produce a list of words grouped by semantic domain, to help find
similar words. If the reader wants to explore the plant names of a
vernacular, it is useful to have the plant names grouped in a list, and to
have the list divided into various sub-groupings.

Having read the LDL today, it seems there are at least three possible ways
of ordering the semantic domain list. (1) There may be a universal order,
which would reflect a kind of average of individual ethno-taxonomic systems.
This has the advantage of being intuitive and easily used by everyone. (2)
You could use an English ethno-taxonomy, which has the benefit of being
intuitive and easily used by an English reader. (3) You could use the
ethno-taxonomy of the vernacular language, which has the advantage of being
a insightful window on the vernacular language and thought system, but the
disadvantage of possibly being obscure to an outsider. I was wondering which
of the three options the DDP taxonomy was aiming at, and whether the DDP
taxonomy needs to be tweaked for each language, or deliberately kept
unchanged.

I have just learned that in the Austronesian language I work with, coconut
palms, sago palms, pandanus trees and betelnut palms are all not considered
'trees'. There is no superordinate term to refer to them, as you rightly
suggested might be the case.

Regards, Greg

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Wayne Leman <mailto:wayne_leman at sil.org>  

To: lexicographylist@ <mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
yahoogroups.com 

Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 2:09 AM

Subject: [Lexicog] palm trees

Greg, if you are attempting to reflect the lexicon of a language, what is
the purpose of using a semantic taxonomy that does not reflect the lexical
relationships of that language?

It seems to me that using an "external" taxonomy to aid English readers
creates a distorted view of the lexical relations within the language, which
includes taxonomic relationships.

By the way, it is not necessary to have superordinate category
classification words in order for a people to have the concept of a semantic
grouping, although it definitely helps. Not every concept that people have
is lexicalized, including in English.

Wayne
-----
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--------

Hi Ron,

I was not thinking of using a vernacular classification because the
vernacular I am studying actually seems to have few classification words of
levels that I can find. Also, I want my semantic domain list to reflect a
likely folk classification of English readers because it will mostly be
English readers who access the (English) sematic domain list. I know you do
not want an English folk classification. Sorry.

<snip>

Regards, Greg

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