[Lingtyp] query: "animal"

Mon Oct 15 11:21:20 UTC 2018

May I suggest a google form to be spread around facebook and twitter etc?

*Med vänliga hälsningar**,*

*Hedvig Skirgård*

PhD Candidate

The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

School of Culture, History and Language
College of Asia and the Pacific

The Australian National University

Website <https://sites.google.com/site/hedvigskirgard/>

P.S. If you have multiple email addresses, I kindly ask you to just use one
with corresponding with me. Email threads and invites to get confusing
otherwise. I will only email you from my gmail, even if other email
addresses re-direct emails to them to my gmail (ANU etc).

Den mån 15 okt. 2018 kl 21:31 skrev Assibi Apatewon Amidu <
assibi.amidu at ntnu.no>:

> Dear David and all,
>
> Your exploration is very educative. I cannot claim to be able to answer
> your questions, but here is a take from Kiswahili. In Kiswahili, the
> categorization is as follows:
>
> 1. *Mtu/Watu* 'being/s' (Classes 1/2 M/WA) includes human and other
> animates. They are superordniate terms which subsume (2-3).
> 2. *Mnyama/Wanyama* 'animal/s, ±live' (Classes 1/2 M/WA) , (historically
> undifferentiated as* nyama/nyama* of classes 9/10, N/N up to ends of the
> 19th century) which subsume (3), hence hypernym to (3).
> 3. *Mdudu/Wadudu* 'insect/s, crawler/s, parasite/s, and others,
> ±live' (Classes 1/2 M/WA).
>
> This gives us three generic terms for referring to humans, animal, insects
> and other species all the way to microbes. (2-3) are co-hyponyms of (1).
> These are not sharp mutually exclusive categories. Thus, centipede,
> scorpion, etc. are also types of  (3), and human, and other animals, e.g.
> hippo, can be described as *wadudu*, or better still with the
> augmentative *dudu/madudu*, depending on the communication intention of
> the speaker, e,g, how monstrous they perceive the entity. Returning to your
> list of words, they would fall under (1-2), but specifically under (2) in
> everyday usage. For a quick, not too detailed, discussion, kindly look at
> chapter 2 of
>
> Amidu, A. A. (2007). *Semantic Assignement Rules in Kiswahili Bantu
> Classes*. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Assibi
>
> On 14. okt. 2018, at 08:11, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>  wrote:
>
> Randy,
>
> So which of the items in (1-8) are covered by Chinese *dòngwù* (動物),
> ‘moving thing’?
>
> David
>
>
>
> On 14/10/2018 03:59, Randy LaPolla wrote:
>
> Hi David,
> The categories as you have them (1-8) reflect certain cultural
> conceptions, and so won’t be the same for other cultures. For example, in
> Chinese bats were traditionally seen as flying mice, and lizards were seen
> as four-legged snakes.
> The word in Chinese that we translate as ‘animal’ is *dòngwù* (動物),
> ‘moving thing’.
>
> Randy
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 14 Oct 2018, at 12:33 AM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> I am interested in exploring, cross-linguistically, the semantic range of
> words that correspond more or less to the English word "animal".
>
>
> Here are examples of the things that English "animal" refers to:
>
>
> 1. dog, kangaroo, lizard, frog ...
>
> 2. eagle, sparrow, chicken, bat ...
>
> 3. bee, scorpion, spider, centipede ...
>
> 4. crab, shrimp ...
>
> 5. worm, leech ...
>
> 6. starfish, jellyfish, squid, octopus ...
>
> 7. oyster, clam ...
>
> 8. sponge (?) ...
>
>
> I am looking for examples of languages in which the basic word closest to
> English "animal" is nevertheless different in its coverage.  In
> particular, I would like to find instances — if such exist — of languages
> in which there is a basic word that covers the examples in 1-4 (or maybe
> 1-5) to the exclusion of those in 5-8 (or maybe 6-8).   (Note that the
> question concerns every-day words that reflect our naive folk biological
> knowledge, not with scientific terms in those few languages that have such
> terminology.)
>
>
> Some words of background:  A colleague and I working in experimental
> cognitive science have found (non-linguistic) empirical evidence for the
> psychological reality of an ontological category that consists roughly of
> animals of the kind exemplified in 1-4 (and possibly also 5).  We are
> calling this category "higher animals".  The characteristic prototypical
> features of higher animals include a single axis of symmetry, the existence
> of head, torso and limbs, a face in the front of the head that includes
> sensory organs such as eyes, and a mouth for eating, and the ability to
> move forward in the direction that the head is facing.  A challenge that
> we face is that, in the (few) languages that we are familiar with, there is
> no simple word for higher animals.  But we are hoping that other
> languages might have such a word.  in addition, we would also welcome
> grammatical evidence for the category of higher animals, for example in the
> form of grammatical rules that are sensitive to the animacy hierarchy by
> making reference to a cut-off point between higher and other animals.
>
>
> I look forward to your responses.  Thanks,
>
>
> David
>
> --
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
>
>
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>
> --
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
>
>
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