[Lexicog] palm trees

[dick_watson at SIL.ORG]

Ron,

Many years ago when we were building lexicon and studying ethnology of the 
Pacoh in VN, I set a stack of paper in front of my language associate and 
asked him to start the first sheet by dividing the universe into parts, 
then dividing those parts into parts until he had lists of fillers of all 
the parts.  He took to the task with diligence and before long had a pile 
of sheets filled up. We didn't keep up the exercise for very long because 
we had other things to move onto that we thought were more important, but 
I've often wished we could have had him and others spend more time on 
those lists, thinking of areas that had been missed and more terms that 
needed splitting.  We had a lot of compounds, but I can see now that to be 
more complete we would probably need to have more phrases.  I believe his 
universe started with a compound of earth and sky and he spent most of his 
time dividing the earth and its contents, but I'm pretty sure there was 
one page of parts of the sky too.  He had one year of Vietnamese 
schooling, but I think his divisions were pretty ethnocentric. As you 
said, I too was interested to see how many of his divisions were the same 
as mine, but occasionally surprised by the differences.

Dick
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