Just 2 minor notes on realia (was: A little more on Iroquoian )

[Rankin, Robert L]

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Koontz John E wrote:
> By way of background, I beli[e]ve taxonomists have waffled over the
> years (even the last 50 years) over whether to classify all (or most)
> felidae in one large genus Felis, or in several ...

I suppose this is, in part at least, a reflection of the shift in biological
taxonomy from a phenetic (not phonetic!) basis to a cladistic one.  Advances
in DNA technology have made purely cladistic classification possible.  This
was an important aspect of the discussions surrounding the Greenberg/Amerind
controversy.  Greenberg's technique was unabashedly phenetic, and he said as
much in his publications, praising the Linnean taxonomic procedures
constantly as a model for linguists to follow.  But linguists strongly
favored cladistic models long before biologists did.  I'm not sure many
linguists ever saw these basic differences clearly.

As for cats, we're stuck with folk taxonomies in any event, which is why
we're having to deal with so many furry critters.  The only example I know
of in which English 'cat' may have been borrowed is Choctaw /katos/, but
that may well be from Spanish 'gato(s)'.  No term for felis cattus
domesticus is reconstructible in Muskogean languages (Creek /poosi/, Choc.
/katos/, etc.), but a term for 'tiger' something like */kowi/, is
reconstructible AFAIK.

Where's Jess when we need him?  He probably has a gazillion sound symbolic
cat terms.

Bob