[Lexicog] palm trees

[Ronald Moe]

Dick,

This is good, but I've got two questions. (1) Did this exercise just deal
with the physical universe? (2) Was there any indication that the lexicon
was not hierarchically organized? Put another way, could each category be
subdivided into smaller and smaller categories? (I think of a hierarchy as
being essentially two dimensional.) Or was there evidence that it was more
like a multi-dimensional network?

 

If it is the latter, then I think the only way to elicit an emic network is
to start with a word (it can be any word) and let the speakers gather all
the words related to it. One word in a lexical set (or domain) will lead to
another which suggests another group of words. One of those suggests another
group. Gradually we will collect more and more domains. Some domains will be
more closely related than others. So even the domains will fall into groups.
In this way we could gradually grow the network. I've found that the DDP
hierarchy cannot capture this network of domains. I would need to create
lots of cross-references between domains. I don't know how to display this
network. In fact I don't have a good metaphor to describe it.

 

If anyone wants to play around with their emic domains, try doing this as an
exercise. It is sort of like the free association tests that psychologists
like: "I'll say a word, and you tell me the first word that comes to mind."
Only in this case the linguist says, "I'll say a word, and you tell me all
the other words that come to mind when you think of that word."

 

Ron Moe

 

  _____  

From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of dick_watson at sil.org
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:22 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Lexicog] palm trees

 







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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