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<p>Hello everybody</p>
<p>Indeed, the coverage of the term "animal" may vary in time, as
well as across languages. Here are two quick searches with Google
Ngram viewer, one in English with "animals,insects,plants" from
1850 to 2000 in British English (<a
href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=animals%2Cinsects%2Cbirds&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1850&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Canimals%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Banimals%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAnimals%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BANIMALS%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cinsects%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Binsects%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BInsects%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BINSECTS%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cbirds%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bbirds%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBirds%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBIRDS%3B%2Cc0">here</a>),
the second with "animaux,insectes,plantes" from 1850 to 200 in
French (<a
href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=animaux%2Cinsectes%2Coiseaux&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1850&year_end=2000&corpus=19&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Canimaux%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Banimaux%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAnimaux%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cinsectes%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Binsectes%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BInsectes%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BINSECTES%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Coiseaux%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Boiseaux%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOiseaux%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOISEAUX%3B%2Cc0">here</a>).</p>
<p>While the former (English) shows comparable frequencies for
"animals" and "birds" ("insects" being marginal), suggesting that
"animal" does not include birds by default, the latter (French)
shows a huge difference between "animaux" and "oiseaux"
("insectes" being now similar to "oiseaux"), which may suggest
that "animal" is a cover term including "oiseaux".</p>
<p>About databases and colexification : a search in RefLex
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.reflex.cnrs.fr">www.reflex.cnrs.fr</a>, 1200 sources for 800 African languages) gives
7 sources with "animal" being colexified with "bird". These 7
sources represent only 2 "languages", namely Balant and Bayot,
both belonging to the Bak group of the Atlantic branch of
Niger-Congo. In Balant, it appears that the original source (which
is available from the RefLex interface) suggests (withou being
totally explicit) that the word for "bird" would rather be
something like "flying animal". In Bayot however, the original
source is a wordlist where "animal" and "bird" are two separate
entries (not even on the same page). It is likely that these words
were elicited separately, therefore the colexification is a bit
more reliable here. This paragraph to insist on the fact that
databases must be used with extreme care, especially when the
results are sparse.</p>
<p>Rereading the above I don't think I've contributed much to the
debate. Sorry, c'est comme ça !</p>
<p>Guillaume<br>
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