[Lexicog] palm trees

[Greg and Heather Mellow]

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 
  To: lexicographylist at 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
  -----
  Ninilchik Russian dictionary online:
  http://ninilchik.noadsfree.com

  --------

  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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