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

[Ron Moe]

Peter,

Your comment (below) on universals is well taken. None of us can make any
claims about universals because we haven't yet investigated every language.
Instead we have to make statements like, "No language has yet been found
that...." Some years back I was encouraged to look for universals, since
that was one of the primary goals of linguistics. Subsequently I've fallen
into the habit (error?) of speculating on universals. Since semantics and
lexicography are not very well developed disciplines (at least in the area
of universals), we should be talking about tendencies or frequently observed
patterns. A counter example can disprove an exceptionless law, but not an
observation about tendency or frequency. If I would just leave out the
allness statements, I'd be OK. So perhaps a better wording of the question
would be, "Is there a tendency for languages to form major categories for
'flying animals' 'animals that move on land' and 'water dwelling animals'?
If so, what tendencies can we observe for what is considered to be
prototypical? What animals are most typically included or excluded from each
category? What features are usually considered essential or more important
in each category (e.g. 'feathered' is more important than 'flying' in the
English category 'bird': flightless bird, *featherless bird)? What other
categories or subcategories are frequently found in languages (e.g.
'domesticated animals' is probably common, 'crustaceans' is probably
uncommon)?

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peterkirk at qaya.org]
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2004 9:53 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] What is a bat? - natural and unnatural terms


On 15/08/2004 08:35, Ron Moe wrote:

> ...
>
> One of the questions I would like to answer is what is universal about
> animal classification systems in the world's languages. Do all
> languages distinguish 'bird-like/flying animals' from 'non-flying big
> animals that walk on four legs'? If there is always a 'bird/flying
> animal' category, what is the range of variation? Is there a fairly
> typical category, or are there two: (1) bird, or (2) flying animal?
> Will a language have one or the other?
>
Maybe you have to ask first whether these distinctions universally
correspond to experience. In New Zealand, prior to modern colonisation,
there were almost no 'non-flying big animals that walk on four legs',
but there were many flightless birds, as well as flying ones (and, as
elsewhere, birds which are almost flightless but do flap their wings and
occasionally take off - so this binary division is not a good one). In
Australia the situation was rather similar - there were large animals
but most of them hop on two legs. So one might expect the lexical
categories in such places to be rather different.


--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/






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