Publication details
Folk taxonomies outside of the domain of "living things": somewhat odd classifications
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Naming the entities of the world helps people to conceptualise it and structured lexical sets which result from this prove the existence of underlying conceptual systems. Different languages lexicalise concepts differently, and although sets based on scientific or encyclopaedic knowledge tend to be structured analogously, those which derive from cultural, everyday knowledge, vary considerably in different languages. These folk concepts are thus language-specific and language-dependent. The phenomenon of “folk knowledge“ has been studied extensively by Haiman, Apresjan, Medin, Wierzbicka and others, and the fact that some hidden, tacit and intuitive knowledge in the minds of speakers exists led to the identification of ethnobiological universals, since this principle was seen as typical of the domain of “living things“. Here, the distinction between scientific and folk taxonomies is particularly evident, as other than purely scientific considerations are at play in folk concepts, such as experience, superficial similarities, utility, etc. This paper aims to demonstrate that the domain specificity in cognition, traditionally assigned to and studied in living things, can be found in other semantic areas, for example in the lexical sets of everyday objects, geographic phenomena or machinery. The “folk“ categorisation in human minds and subsequently in the lexicon is determined by a complex mix of factors, including function, physical properties (appearance, size, colour, material, etc.) and personal experience. |