[Lexicog] What is a bat? - natural and unnatural terms

Sat Aug 14 14:22:41 UTC 2004

Here's a Saturday afternoon lexicographical digression. 

Fritz's thought-provoking question and the equally thought-provoking replies from Thapelo and others prompts me to mention some work I'm just starting on natural-kind terms in English and other European languages. I'd welcome comments and feedback.  

Terms denoting classes of flora and fauna can, I think, usefully be divided into "natural" and "unnatural" terms, though of course, as always, the boundaries are not clear-cut. Natural terms are central to the language, have fuzzy definition boundaries, and are often exploited to make new meanings, metaphors, and other creative lexical uses.  Unnatural terms have stipulative definitions with sharp boundaries. They are usually of quite recent origin (sometimes as a specialization of a pre-existing natural term).

Some examples: 

Mammal is an example of an unnatural term.  It was coined in 1826 as a derivative of the 18th-century New Latin term Mammalia 'having mammae' (milk-secreting breasts) -- a direct result of natural scientists' dissatisfaction with the fuzzy boundaries of natural terms such as animal and beast.   As zoology advanced, scientists seized on the common feature of breast-feeding  to create a term for all only those animals that breast-feed their young. The term has done wonderful service in the sciences since then, receiving only an occasional jolt from discoveries such as the platypus, an egg-laying mammal -- a remarkable boundary case.  But let no one think that mammal is a natural word of English. It isn't. It is a term of art. "I was walking through the woods the other day when I saw a mammal" would not be a natural sentence of English. "Mammal" is not normally exploited in metaphors and similes.  
I am delighted to hear that Setswana does not have a term for 'mammal'. Setswana would seem to be a more natural language than English. 

Modern English animal, on the other hand,  is an example of a natural term. Its central membership is clear, but its boundaries in ordinary usage are much vaguer. 

    -- Is a lizard an animal?  My intuition (!) is that many English speakers would say yes.
    -- Is a bird an animal? My intuition is that many English speakers would say no, 
            probably after some hesitation. (Birds are, of course, members of the 
            animal kingdom, but that's different: Animal kingdom is itself an unnatural 
            term.)
    -- Is a fish an animal?  Not in ordinary everyday English.   
    -- Is a spider an animal?
    -- What about insects? (and are butterflies insects?)
    Etc.

Paradoxically enough, in the 14th-16th centuries animal was brought into English as a learned term, a Latinate, unnatural alternative to the then current term, beast.  A 16th-century classification, in Gilles Du Wes's 1532 "Introductorie  for to lerne to rede, to pronounce and to speke French trewly", classifies the animal kingdom into "beestes, byrdes, fyshes, reptyll". Insects were, apparently, beneath notice.

Modern English words like horse, dog, fox, cat, mouse, rat, snake are natural terms.  They may or may not pick out sets of creatures coextensive with equivalent scientific unnatural terms (equine, canine, feline, rodent), but they are also widely used in similes, metaphors, and other exploitations.  This alone is a good reason for categorizing them as natural terms.  

There is a fascinating interplay between natural and unnatural terms, also between natural and unnatural meanings of the same terms.  One example:

Reptile (in modern English) has become an 'unnatural' term in its central uses.  Originally a natural term denoting anything that creeps (including earthworms, for example), also an adjective meaning creepy-crawly, it was specialized in the 19th century by zoologists to denote all and only members of the zoological class Reptilia, even those that don't creep or crawl (e.g. flying lizards). But meanwhile, it also developed a conventional figurative meaning -- "a person of a low, mean, grovelling, or repulsive character" (OED) -- very natural!

Natural and unnatural terms generally coexist peacefully, and sometimes interact semantically, in most if not all European languages, but they fulfil different functions. Unnatural terms are necessary for scientific precision, and since English is the international language of science, it necessarily has a large vocabulary of unnatural terms. Natural terms are necessary for saying new things and for creative and imaginative speaking and writing and to anbale people to use language at a normal speed in everyday discourse without agonizing unduly over precision. 

* * *

I use the term "unnatural" not only because it contrasts neatly with "natural", but also because its rather negative connotations are a salutary reminder of how the supremacy of scientism and logicism have distorted our understanding of the variability and vagueness that are essential features of natural languages. I have nothing against scientific research -- of course not! -- but I question the assumption, often made in Europe and America, that the artificial terminology that is necessary for precision in the natural sciences represents an "improved" form of natural language.  To think this is to underestimate the creativity of lexical semantics: existing words, especially natural terms, are constantly used in new ways.

Patrick Hanks

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Thapelo Otlogetswe 
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 10:15 AM
  Subject: Re: [Lexicog] What is a bat?

  Never thought seriously about a bat name in Setswana until now - we call it mmamathwane [a feminine name, because of the mma- prefix meaning 'mother of' or just 'mother']. Why the feminine name I cannot say. It would appear 'mathwane' is onomatopoeic to the sound the bats produce and it is possibly derived from the verb 'go thwanya' - describing a cracking kind of sound. I imagine many people in Botswana would see a bat as a bird mainly because it flies - it would be a bird that suckles its young [for those who know it does!]. We do not have a word for 'mammals' in the language & therefore such a classification may only be an academic one not salient to the mother tongue speakers. 

  Fritz Goerling <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org> wrote:
    In Noah J. Jabobs' amusing "Naming Day in Eden" (The MacMillan Company
    Collier-MacMillan Ltd., London 1958), p. 16, I found the following
    interesting quote on how the bat is named in different languages:

    "...how did Adam name the bat? Which characteristic impressed him at
    the moment of naming? Did its blindness move him to call it
    'murciélago'(Spanish), its baldness 'chauve-souris'(French), its
    shyness 'pipistrello'(Italian), its leathery skin 'Läderlapp'(Swedish)
    or 'böregér'(Hungarian from 'bör,' leather; 'egér,' mouse), its
    preference for the night 'nukteris'(Greek), its resemblance to the
    mouse 'Fledermaus'(German) or 'letutsaya mysh'(Russian), the sound of
    its flapping wings 'watwat'(Arabic), its winglike hands 'chiroptera'
    (Greek 'chir,' hand, plus 'pteron,' wing), its resemblance to a lily(!)
    'liliac'(Rumanian), its reputed love of bacon 'bat' (Old English
    'backe,' bacon)? The Chinese have conferred a number of laudatory
    names on this mouse-like mammal, such as 'embracing wings, heavenly
    rat, fairy rat, night swallow,' and use it as a symbol of happiness
    and long life because its name 'fu' in Chinese happens to be a
    homonym which means both 'bat'and 'prosperity.'"

    I have found African stories about the bat being sad because it does
    not know where it belongs.
    How do you name the bat in your language? And where would you put it
    in a domain dictionary?

    Fritz Goerling
    ---

  Thapelo Otlogetswe 
  Information Technology Research Institute
  University of Brighton 
  Lewes Road, Brighton 
  BN2 4GJ, England 
  Tel: (+44) 1273 642912 (office) 
        (+44) 1273 642908 (fax) 
  http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Thapelo.Otlogetswe/

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