RELATIVISM VS. UNIVERSALISM: A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION.

JOHN B. TRUMPER- MARTA MADDALON

University of Calabria

ABSTRACT
Many interesting attempts to retrace the cultural evolution of human thought about nature, and
the consequent creation of taxonomic systems, have been carried out by scholars whose
theoretical discussions start from the Aristotelian positions expressed in Partes Animalium and
proceed to the so-called modern systematics of Carl von Linn. Many studies, focalising on
perceiving, recognising and categorising the external world by human beings, have been
carried out by scholars of different disciplines, and, within the terms of a multidisciplinary
approach, involve scientists, anthropologists, (ethno-) linguists, etc. The first two aspects
(perception, recognition) have become central in recent neurolinguistic research, the third
(categorisation) in modern semantic and ethno-linguistic studies. Here we discuss some
general topics such as the very nature of natural categories, generalisation in name creation
processes and the existence of common trends in the bidirectional shift generic< >
intermediate< > life form.

0. PREMISSES.
The whole set of linguistic (semantic) theories on the relationship between concepts
(ideas, mental images, meaning and so forth) and their linguistic realisation (acoustic images,
signifiant, form of expression etc.) deals with the creation of more or less complete or efficient
models explaining how human beings cope with the task of perceiving, recognising and, in
particular, categorising and naming the external world and its parts. The first two aspects
(perceiving and recognising) have become central in recent neurolinguistic research, the third
(categorising and naming) in modern semantic and ethno-linguistic studies. The two main
aspects dealing with the concept of category1, as pointed out since the classical definition2 of
the nature of categories on, involve the specific relationship between entity and category and,
in a far more problematic manner, the criteria that underlie the creation of categories
themselves. In particular, we have to deal with two major sets of questions:
Are the criteria implied in the process of category creation common to all
classificatory systems (universal or pseudo-universal), or are they strictly culture-
specific?
How can the process of creating categories by a speech community be described with
regard to the main models apparently involved in such a process?

Anticipating conclusions that we draw at the end of the present discussion, we would
claim that there is an absolute necessity for postulating a comprehensive model which will
deal with many approaches that are not necessarily alternatives or mutually exclusive. In this
sense two interesting and useful ways of tackling the category creation task seem to involve

1
Consequently with its essence (if there is one) and the way in which it is perceived by the members of a speech
community.
2
The classical definition can be summed up in the following manner. To say that an X is a Y means assigning an
ENTITY X to the CATEGORY Y. This may be done by checking off the properties of X against the features which
define the ESSENCE of the CATEGORY Y. In this respect, we can define the knowledge of the meaning of the word
X as characterized by the knowledge of this set of features.
both taxonomic and partonomic models, as in LANSING 19953. According to Lansing, the
taxonomic and partonomic approaches represent alternative points of view underlying
different models of nature categorisation, that have, as a consequence, different results, such
as the opposition between an Aristotelian partonomic approach and a Linnaean mainly
taxonomic one. In other works on this topic we have proposed an attentive re-consideration
of the history of category creation, as it emerges from the most important authors of the past,
in order to show that taxonomic and partonomic approaches are not necessarily exclusive but
rather models that can be simultaneously applied4. Category creation may even be a product of
the process itself but also produces an internal rearrangement of the categories. As can be seen
in the following discussion of treeishness in Latin, tree becomes a part because the lexeme
undergoes a process of semantic change; this provokes a re-organization of the meaning plane,
as well as the filling in of the now blank space in the system, operations which were evidently
felt to be necessary by speakers. Parts and wholes thus become essential to the defining
process, as also to systemic relations. They are, moreover, in continuous movement in
different, sometimes opposing, directions. Such a dynamic process can consequently be
interpreted as the movement of a part in a partonomic model. It can also be interpreted as an
application of vantage theory as presented in MACLAURY, LANSING & TAYLOR 19955. This
particular example, however, might also be construed as the application of a taxonomic
model, since any categorial movement within the system implies a top-down or bottom-up
movement (vertical exchange), or the substitution of taxonomically equivalent elements
(horizontal exchange). It can also express the dynamic relation between levels life-form vs.
Generic and vice versa,- from the historical point of view, with extreme relevance to historical
linguistics and language change. Examples of internal reorganization are readily found when
we look attentively at linguistic systems in which, for example, a bottom-up movement
transforms a specific level lexeme into a generic one, or vice-versa a top-down movement
(from the generic to specific levels), perhaps owing to the cultural and semantic salience of
the item in the model. This may well be the case of particular flowers or vegetables
becoming FLOWER or VEGETABLE (Friulian rse flower, replaced at the lower level by
garful both rose and carnation)6. Another case in the plant world would be middle Greek
lusipavvrion (any pain-relieving plant, < Greek lusivpono" pain-reliever) giving the Central
Calabrian lexicon for Achillea species7. The contrary process concerns particular animals
names deriving from the generic or supergeneric level, for example the well known evolution
3
J: LANSING, Genus, Species, and Vantages, in L.R. TAYLOR- R.E. MACLAURY, 1995.
4
Suffice it to mention MADDALON 1998, TRUMPER-MADDALON 2003, MADDALON 2003, TRUMPER 2003 amongst
other contributions to the theme.
5
Let one quote suffice: MACLAURY 1995: 231 ff. states Vantage theory [] holds that the analogy between
space and thought is formed at the specific level of coordinates by which we construct a point of vie[...] in the
mind, the analogous coordinates consist of specific sensation and cognition [] From such a mental vantage,
people create, maintain, and change a category in an effort to comprehend the world. [] They change their
view by altering mobile coordinates and by rearranging or replacing fixed coordinates.
6
A Southern Italian example would be Greek xulivcorto" Thelignum sspp. (a particular cabbage-type
Brassicacea) > Byzantine diminutive plural ta; xulicovrtia cabbages > Salento Greek silicovurtia,
silicovurdia, North Calabrian (Lausberg Area) licrdia (var. licrda), Salento Romance salicrda soup,
obviously deriving from cabbage soup. It would seem parallel to Celtic developments of Latin loans, for
example Welsh cawl soup < cabbage soup < Latin caulus, in late Latin cabbage not just stalk [cawl
borrowed from Latin has never succeded in ousting bresych, which we take to be native, relatable to the
adjective bras strong, sturdy, i.e. possessing a sturdy stalk]. The Romance example (licrdia, licrda,
salicrda) is not explained in Rohlfs works where the items are documented, with severe geolinguistic
limitations.
7
The example implies a shift lusivpono" > diminutivised noun lusiponavrion > by metathesis *siluponavvrion >
by syncope *silupavvrion > silipru (Central Calabrian dialects) Achillea millefolium Auctores, Achillea
ligustica All., Achillea Tenorei Grande.
in Romance of Latin ANML (> nimaal pig in certain Lombard dialects) or BSTA (>
biche in French doe, biscia/ bissa snake or adder throughout Italy, becia, bcia sheep
in Dolomite Ladin, its collective bestiame cattle in Italian), its nominalised adjective
BESTNUS giving Ligurian and Calabrian lexical items for shark8, even that of
MASCLUS male (> Neo-Venetian mas-cio pig, rural mas-cia sow), etc. It is parallel to
the historical shift undergone by wild animal and deer in the history of English.
A similar situation arises in the well documented chain shift LIFE > FOOD > SPECIFIC
PLANT, a change more drastic than that of the straightforward COLOUR QUALITY >
PLANT (attribute, feature > generic)9. FOOD > specific plants (Graminacaeae, Cruciferae and
others) is a well attested change in historical Celtic. The *GWEI-T- LIFE base gave W.
bwyd/ Irish bad[h] food, used as a common starting point for a number of spontaneous
edible plants such as Oxalis acetosella L: wood-sorrel (Erse badh-an-ein), Rorippa
nasturtium-aquaticum (L.) Hayek water-cress (Welsh bwyd-y-tlawd: see Davies & Jones 11
for further elaborations on the theme)10. It seems plausible that the same Celtic base underlies
a possible Gaulish *beit > Latin bta (alternating with *btta) which from Varro on gradually
replaced Latin holus as Beta cycla L. and other spontaneous edibles, with various outcomes in
Romance11. We might add here the historical Calabrian development of Late Latin essnta
PARTONOMY + LIFE (vital liquid or lymph) x snsus sense; aroma (LIFE + attribute +
partonomy) which produced dialect Assenzu/ Senzu (North), Assenza-u (Middle and South),
covering a large group of Labiates and citrous fruit12. A similar shift from FOOD to GREENS,
but without further elaboration in lower-ordered groups, is illustrated in the German collective
Gemse greens; vegetables < Mus < Old High German muos < West Germanic ms food

8
Compare, by way of brief exemplification, bbestinu (Cetraro, Bagnara Calabra, Monasterace, Roccella Ionica,
Bovalino), bbistinu (Paola), mbestinu (Fuscaldo), mmestinu/ mmastinu (Montegiordano, Roseto Capo Spulico,
Trebisacce: owing to interference from mastino mastiff?) as the supergeneric for shark; it also enters into
local specific names for larger sharks such as Carcharias sspp., Lamna nasus Bonn and Heptranchias perlo Bonn.
Bestin in Genuese (for its extensive meaning see Casaccia 1876. 1. 130 Bestin, psci besti-i) seems to have been
substituted in the modern era by cagnassu, which in turn is being substituted, so it seems, by the Italianism
psciu can for large sharks: see relative sections in Cuneo-Petracco Sicardi-Cortelazzo 1995. Even further afield
in Romance, e.g. in Catalan, bastina, pix de bastina, pix bastinal seem to be as general as camar, though
Griera 1923: 38 would appear to be showing that bastina also shifts to cover some specifics more than others
(Scyliorhinus, Oxynotus and Galeus sspp.), while camar in the early 1900s is extended to cover large sharks
such as Carcharias sspp., Lamna nasus Bonn (also named taur = tibur, see Griera 1923: 41, 79 etc.), but at the
same time can be used as cover-term to name smaller sharks.
9
The direction is usually a banal movement YELLOW > GREEN> GREENS/ VEGETABLES, as in the well known
English example, or Latin vrdis (from a growing base, the verb vrre < IEW 1135, green being the colour of
growing plants) > Italian verdura -e greens or specifically vr[]da > vrza Brassica oleracea L., while the
*GEL- yellow base > green (Mallory and Adams 654, IEW 429-432) gives Latin holera greens, Irish
glasraidh greens and relative Russian and Slav terms for greens from Old Church Slavonic zelen on. Many
other examples may be quoted.
10
Such constructs are at least with us since the 1100-1200 period, since they exist in both Middle Irish (an
example to be found in the literature is bad-guin Hyoscyamus sspp.) and Middle Welsh texts of the period.
Movement from the supergeneric to the specific in the shift from Latin/ Italic to Romance is the semantic drift
Oscan *hel[e]sa = Latin holera greens (= vegetables) > North Calabrian jevuza, juza, jvusa Beta cycla L.
rubra.
11
Detailed arguments in this sense are elaborated in Trumper (CILPR 26).
12
The Labiates involved are marjoram, thyme, savory, mints, basil, sages, rosemary, lavander, balms, and the
whole problem is dealt with first specifically in Ielasi 2003 (S. Calabria), generally in Trumper 2011, including
observations on the semantic contamination, while the scentscaping cognitive category that seems to be
manifested in Senzu/ Assenza-u is introduced schematically and illustrated in Trumper (CILPR 26).
(identical to the Old English form), the development of which has been sufficiently explained
in Kluge-Seebold 1999: 576 and IEW 694-695. In the insect world of Romance, on the other
hand, we find FOOD > BAIT > WUG13.
There seems to be no privileged direction for shift, it would seem to be either top-down or
bottom-up in an apparently ad hoc fashion. It cannot, then, be the direction of shift that is
paramount but the very fact of shifting in itself, influenced by cultural salience, function,
geophysical availability, and other similar extra-linguistic factors, which in reality condition
positions and oppositions in a lexico-semantic system in a way that has yet to be
systematically studied.

1. The universality of classificatory models.

1.0. Theoretical prolegomena.
A shift away from a dichotomy based too exclusively on one or the other of the two poles
involved i. e. universalism and cultural relativism, occurs in a not always explicit manner in
recent literature on the theme. The problem is discussed, for example, in Atran (1990: quotes
are from the 19963 paperback edition): Preface, ix, x, xi, where the author amply deals with
the dichotomy universalism vs. relativism in chap. 9 of the same work. In particular, a
position in favour of universalism, even if recognizing the importance of the cultural specific
point of view, is set out quite explicitly on pg. 213 of his work:
But the set of basic cognitive disposition responsible for the ranked structure of
folkbiological classification appears unique in its universality across human minds and
societies. In the development of scientific taxonomy within Western culture, these common-
sense dispositions and more subject to cultural influences.
Our proposal is to reconsider some of the points raised by Atran and use them as starting
points for a discussion of more specific issues that we have decided to deal with here. Our
initial point involves the basic idea that there is absolutely no a priori assumption that
ordinary human nature knowledge and its cognitive organisation has necessarily been
integrated into scientific reasoning. In other words, scientific reasoning does not substitute, as
a higher level alternative, common sense reasoning. Universal trends are to be sought in
mental schemes produced by common sense reasoning, i. e. those trends which Innatism
adherents situate in innate mental structures. It is in terms of such reasoning, though not in any
exclusive sense, that Atran proposes to analyze
I analyze folk knowledge of living kinds. [] There appears to be no specially constituted
science-forming faculty, although there may be more general regulative principles on
rational explanation and intelligibility. Rather, certain sciences seem fitted to specific
common-sense domains. This book takes the example of systematics the science of biological
classification which emerged as an elaboration of universal cognitive schema common to all
and only folkbiological taxonomies. (idem, Introduction pg. x) .
The status of ethnolinguistic classificatory models and the role of universalism, cultural
determined assessments and cognition in their creation are extremely problematic, especially
if we compare the ethnolinguistic approach with Chomskys denial of its relevance in a purely
linguistic model. This problem of ethnosciences role in describing and analyzing biological
classification and its relation to science is tackled in Chomskys discussion in ANTHONY &

13
Central Veneto vscola < scola earthworm < Latin < sca [< dre], North Calabrian civu, cvura earth-
worm/ bait < Latin cbus, etc. (alongside cvura seeds: see Trumper-Maddalon 2003 for details).
HOUSTIER 2003. In particular, Chomsky claimed that ethnosciences main aim was to
construct models for understanding how commonsense made sense of how the world seems to
work (op. cit. pg. 268 on), which in itself is not a banal pursuit (op. cit. p. 289 on) but is part
and parcel of what he calls nature enquiry which has a great deal to do with the brain but not
with formal language enquiry, including semantic models. Of course, the topic is far too vast
to be discussed in an in-depth manner in a short paper, considering all the possible
consequences on the theoretical and practical planes.
Going back to the main aim of our work, we limit our discussion to an attempt to show the
usefulness of a three step model, determining what is:
- really universal (the human cognitive level);
- a practical, specific effect of general classificatory devices, i.e. common metonymic-
metaphoric models;
- changes and different systematic outcomes due to genuine differences at the level of
categorisation and category creation.
The last may well be seen as the effect of an enormous and consistent cultural distance
between semantic representation in different cultural surrounds. In other words, we consider it
fundamental to relativize but in a different manner and in the terms put forward previously, in
order to evidence in an explicit way the details of our theoretical position vis--vis others who
tend to confuse phenomena and the models that analyze them. We also take into account
parameters, in the sense of general principles at the human cognition level, which function as
a series of links between the two poles involved. They are activated in different ways but can
always be referred to a higher explicative level.
It must be admitted that by removing the stress from particular, specific systems (or sub-
classificatory systems) and placing it on general category formation processes, i.e. from the
effects of this activity, so to say, to the process itself, differences become less and less
dramatic, to the point that relativism may, in a number of cases, be seen as a theory on
different worlds spoken by different languages but all referring to the same cognitive
framework. Differences, in such a view, may be considered relevant from a descriptive point
of view, but their interest is mainly in their being a manifestation of a more general process,
being situated at a certain point in a parametric dimension, so to say. A first consideration, at
this point, might be that both at a descriptive and analytical level it would be useful to separate
the theoretical model from its applications, as belonging to different steps, as stated in the
discussion of category creation models or devices.
The theoretical implications of such considerations are multiple: here we concentrate
specifically on the general principles of category creation, even more specifically on the
problem of inclusion levels and their internal and external relations.
The discussion of the search for general recursive patterns, i. e. discoverable in systems
that are very distant from each other spatially, linguistically and historically, is part of the
general problem. Another theoretical problem concerns those dynamic mechanisms which
relate higher levels, say life-forms, with lower ones such as the intermediate or specific,
even in the sense of their long-term etymologies (remote, in terms of their time intervals) or of
the history of concepts. In particular, as in the examples in this paper, the complex dynamics
of life form creation and its relationship with the generic or intermediate levels seen in
name formation processes, seem to be quite general, even universal. If, at a cognitive/
perceptive level, we cannot reject the existence of prototypes or, linguistically, of basic level
terms, at least limiting observations to the specific discussion of natural kinds14, can we not

14
In the sense that we exclude here any discussion on whether and how such basic level terms may be
universally valid, extendible, that is, to other realms, such as artefacts: see the discussion that follows.
also postulate that the first, basic sensorial experiences may very well be at the origin of
naming generic terms (roots), often designating life forms (by bottom-up movement)?

1.1.Natural Kind Terms and category creation processes

Natural kind terms or concepts include animals and plants, as well as chemical and
physical substances. Such a class often constitutes a privileged field of study for
ethnolinguists, semanticists, dialectologists etc., but the very notion of natural kind is
considered highly ambiguous in cognitive literature, which is why we are underscoring the
problem here, though we will not enter into the details of its complexity because of the limits
set by such a paper. We ought, however, to remember the complex theoretical discussion on
the nature and theoretical spin-off that the definition of natural kind produces in the
literature.
This much may be said: on one hand, such kinds are the objects of scientific study, on the
other they are everyday folk notions. An extremely large number of scientific works has been
and is being dedicated to the specific ontological and theoretical status of such a notion. Are
there commonly recognised, proven and accepted differences in natural kind items possessing
an underlying essence, as already said, or naturalness which differentiates them from
artefacts? Many studies on pre-school children category acquisition have been carried out and
show that such a difference (natural vs. artefact) is not pacific and uncontroversial (see
ROSCH 1976, CAREY 1985, GELMAN ET AL. 1988 and so on). There is, however, a stubborn
fiction, as ATRAN 1990: 80 would have it, that such naturalness exists and allows lay folk to
tie into science and scientists to log in to lay discourse. As he pointed out:
The idea of underlying essence, which seems to be universally and spontaneously available
to people for hierarchically classifying and understanding living kinds according to type,
might be variously extended to other domains. For instance, apparent morphological
distinctions between human groups are readily (but not necessarily) conceived as apparent
morphological distinctions between animal species that is, in accordance with presumptions
about underlying physical natures (id. p. 78).
This is a controversial theme, for the effects that its discussion may have on the structured
taxonomies of plants and animals, even in the absence of a rigorous theory about them.
Another aspect, much discussed in recent literature, regards the congruence and role that
beliefs, myths and folk-knowledge connected with common sense concepts possess vis--vis
what is traditionally considered to be the scientific vision of things. This aspect, the first
dealt with, has to do with categorisation, also with representation and the way in which
relative conceptual systems are construed. Specifically, discussing semantic and cognitive
schemes activated in the creation of complex models of representation, we have to take into
account how many and which of these are relative to folk-knowledge founded on magical
beliefs or on creation myths etc. To conclude this brief sketch of what will be treated with
exemplification in 2 and 3, we repeat once again that our position is analogous to that of
those researchers who hold that (1) recourse or reference to a magical or mythical concept or
to other symbolic forms is not directly linked to the creation or interpretation of what are
defined as natural kinds; (2) similar references to, or the presence of similar aspects in,
thoughts on the natural world do not inhibit the creation or even conception of taxonomies or
categorisation. In the light of our discussion it would seem more appropriate to leave aside
this interesting theoretical topic, not underestimating, however, the repercussions it may and
does have on our analytical models, and to concentrate, instead, on another relevant
supposition that refers to what SPERBER 1975: 83 ff. and ATRAN 1990: 79 ff. propose as two-
order dispositions. They postulate that the first deal mainly with what are mentally true
descriptions of the world just because they are so stored (Sperber ibid., our italics), the
second are less immediate because culturally determined, depending on the general education
level, whether it be of laymen or scientists.
Postulating a difference between these two starting points may also lead one to re-consider
the differences studied and commented on in works by Atran, Medin et al. on folk-biological
category creation and thought. In particular, these authors reach interesting conclusions
proposing that there seem to be differences in taxonomic tasks, such as creating categories
(vi inclusion/ exclusion judgements) or discussing the existence of a privileged folk-
biological level. The comparison between the behaviour differences of a group of American
undergraduates and those of Itzai folk experts demonstrates that:
The folk-generic level was inductively privileged for both the Itzaj and the American
undergraduates. For the Itzaj, this is in accord with the location of the presumptive basic level
for traditional societies. For the Americans, it does not correspond to the empirically
established basic level, suggesting a dissociation between knowledge, organized at the life-
form rank (fish, tree), and expectations of shared properties, category coherence, and perhaps
even essence, which is maximized at the folk-generic rank (trout, oak) (COLEY ET AL. pgs.
215-16 in MEDIN-ATRAN1999).
Cultural differences, and consequently behaviour differences, seem to be far more complex
and would be better interpreted in terms of the degree to which knowledge and experience
correspond than as differences in the location of a single privileged level (COLEY ET AL. pag
216 ibid.).
A second interesting tentative conclusion concerns what such authors call folk-biological
reasoning, which is a far more complex topic needing adequate description and analysis. From
their experiments they obtain evidence that despite large disparities in experience and
knowledge of the natural world, folk-generic taxons were inductively privileged for both
groups... Indeed, superimposed data from the two groups are nearly identical (idem, pag.
226), and, as they conclude, similar outcomes often seem to be reached from different
experiential starting points.

1.2. First Conclusions.

Formulating classificatory models, from the point of view we have proposed, becomes in
the light of what we have said thusfar a consequence of MANS PERCEPTION AND COGNITION,
so that such formulations cannot be construed without it. Accepting this theoretical position
means altogether excluding any cultural influence on classification, providing cognition as a
mental process be universal. What is universal may accordingly be due to a common cognitive
process and to common category-forming strategies belonging to the highest and most abstract
level of category-formation and classification. However, differences, even ones that are
dramatic in their effects at lower levels, are surely due to cultural, environmental, social and
economic factors. As far as we can judge, this last position is a reasonable and logical answer
to either an excessively relativist vision that hinders comparative analysis between systems or
an extremist universalistic vision that denies any cultural influence on category-formation.
One is forced to turn, then, to the two-order disposition discussed above.
 2. Examples and possible applications.

2.1. Animal names: fish and fishness.

In support of the theoretical position discussed above, with specific regard to points
relative to the possibility of discovering generalisations at the taxonomic level (hierarchy
creation), we hypothesise that what we have postulated functions at the linguistic level in real
taxonomic organisation and accordingly propose two concrete analyses. As a first approach
we present two examples of lexico-semantic projection models dealing with what are called
life-form names such as fish and tree. In the vast IE Fish Lexicon we propose extrapolating
what might, in our opinion, be called prototypical concepts, thus creating a model for the
lexico-semantic propagation of such prototypes. In the first stage we propose a non-
hierarchical model of the following cases:
A. Basic Morphology, in terms of a scaliness feature and lexical type15;
B. Other Physical properties, dividable into 1. sliminess, exuding slime, 2.
spottedness or speckledness, 3. chromatic prototypes;
C. Habitat, watery being the prime feature: one can successively divide into types
of water habitat (this includes morass, marsh, water-mass, river, lake, sea etc.) and
perhaps the idea of movement in water.
D. Metaphors and similitudes: we concentrate on stick, branch, hook, spine
(thorn, i. e. a general sharpness image), head, penis.

We might remember, en passant, that there is a strong case for water-inhabitant = lower
world inhabitant in Anatolic-Indo-European, as recent studies have noted16. MALLORY &
ADAMS 1997: 205 withold their judgement on the possible relationship between *dhegh-
earth and *dhgh- fish, going no further than a declaration that this base is plausibly the
original Proto-IE one: this may well have been the PIE word for fish, which has been
replaced. If this strong hypothesis be proven, then the original themes for successive noa
replacement would be water-inhabitant and lower-world-inhabitant, even something like
water-man (mans image in water) or lower-world-inhabitant (an animate who is inhabitant
of the lower lower-world).
The situation is far from simple and we cannot deal here with all lexical outcomes in AIE
and their possible contacts with similar types of outcomes in Ugro-Finnic, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic
etc., as can be shown in the case of one lexical prototype for scaliness, in other words
*SKEWHA- [IEW 951-3, 958, MALLORY & ADAMS 510] > *SKWHA-LO- but not in that of another
*GEND-[IEW 351, Indo-European only]. Nor can we deal here with the complexity of
outcomes of the different bases in, say, B. The same can be said for cases subsumed under C.
Scaliness and sliminess are obvious prototypical features in fish lexicon building because
mans first contact with fish is by touch and not by sight or smell, i. e. fishing was essentially
fish-tickling for primitive man.

15
We have considered possessing fins or fin-ness in the same way but find its use marginal and ultraspecific
(Acipenseridae: Trumper & Vigolo 2003: 243-251).
16
There is a probable relationship between the IE base for earth, lower world, *DHEGH- (IEW 414-415
*G D EM-, GAMKRELIDZE & IVANOV 720-721, MALLORY & ADAMS 174, WATKINS 20002: 20) and one of the
H H

basic themes for fish *DHGHUH- (IEW 416-417 *GHDHU-, GAMKRELIDZE & IVANOV 453, MALLORY & ADAMS
205, WATKINS 20002: 20 *dhgh-), a relationship made explicit in Gamkrelidze and Ivanovs comment: The
word for fish goes back to a derivation in * from *dhegh- earth: *dhgh- fish, lit. underground (animal)
.
In the case of category A there seems to be a generally accepted idea that Linnus Squalus
category represented a normal use of Latin squalus shark, true as meaning in PLINYS
NATURALIS HISTORIA 9. 78 but an evident reference to a Cyprinid in VARROS RES RUSTICA 3.
23, COLUMELLA RES RUSTICA 8. 16 (usually identified as the chub). From N. Italian research
we find competition for Leuciscus sp. names between outcomes of capto: captnem,
captnem, captnus etc. with a large head similitude, and those of squalus scaly, both in N.
Eastern dialects of Italy (squalt[o] vs. cavin, cavaln, or Friulian squl) and in N. Western
dialects (scajn, scagin), as well as in Central dialects (for squaglio see S. BATTAGLIA, GDLI
19. 1087) and in Ibero-Romance, Port. and Span. escalo (comments in RIOS PANISSE &
SANTAMARINA 1977 item 252). Big-head replacements can probably be traced back to a
Greek k e f a l h v: k e vf a l o j paradigm (PISANI 1968-1970 in BALM 10-12), though the origin
might well be considered a chicken and egg question. The main sources for a fish prototype
would seem to be scaliness (possession of scales) and largeheadedness, which, in the
ancient world, appeared to be challenged by a lower-world inhabitant parameter, now a
definite loser.

Fish-Features
Comprehensive table 1.

Possessing Other Physical Properties Habitat *Watery Metaphors

Scales and
(Symbolic) similitudes:

Scaliness a. spottiness- speckledness; a. types of water; stick; branch;

b. sliminess; b. movement penis; head
c. chromaticity. c. symbolic
<animal metaphors>
[Underground
or
Lower-world]

In our discussion of water as a typical habitat, we refer in particular to the following three main
aspects, that seem to be central in human cognition and to be of general cultural relevance.
* Habitat
A.1. Water in a physical sense (lake, pond, morass, marsh, river, brook, sea).
A.2. Water as a magic-ritual element.
B. The Lower-world (underground).

2.3. Plant: trees and treeishness

The second example regards the life-form tree which we propose to study through those
properties which we postulate may well be involved in the creation of such a concept and used in
the structuring of a complex model that we have identified in many such nomenclatural creations.
As stated, we postulate that the analysis of lexical processes is strictly connected, in its
extralinguistic dimensions, with the categorisation level. This is the starting point for an analysis in
which we identify characteristic primes, at the cognitive level, which seem to be at the origin of the
tree concept at a much deeper level.
 SCHEME 1A TREEISHNESS

There seems to be a PIE treeness item *DORU- which is locally replaced by outcomes of
W
*K RES- brushwood to give a new lexical unit for tree in cases where we move from life-
forms to generics such as oak, holm oak (Western Celtic and Germanic but also Slav and
Greek), and more restrictedly by outcomes of a wood base *WIDHU- (West IE). In some cases
we have the realisation of treeness in terms of a high-low dimension probably determined
by humans sight experience (landscaping) and cognition of arboreal plants, that is the relative
height with respect to humans or lack of this as evidenced by ones seeing of particular trees.
The stump comes to the fore in rare cases, sometimes in terms of the partonomic foot, as in
Indian padapa- tree and in late Greek instances17 as well as restricted southern Italo-
Romance (Calabrian Romance pedi piru, pedi milu etc.). In fact the problem of replacement
in the lexicalization of a treeness concept is more pertinent to Latin lexical shift than to other
IE-speaking groups (with the partial exception of Iranic18) which, shifting its treeness base to
(1) tree-trunk > trunk of the body (trncus < *DRU-N-KO-), (2) > wooden utensils (Latin tra,
tr, trlla etc.), (3) a new hardness lexical prototype (drus, drre)19, consequently allows
new replacement mechanisms.
The first substitution is obviously in terms of the lexical prototype of arboreal loftiness, hence
*HERDHOS- > arbos (later arbor)/ arbusculus, arbustus (> arbusta coll. pl.) alongside arduus.
Even in classical Latin this shares the tree semantic space with outcomes of the flat, spread
theme used primarily as partonomic sole of foot, i. e. *PELHA-T- (IEW 833-834, MALLORY
AND ADAMS 83) > Proto-Latin perfective *pltre, then as a verbal imperfective with an n-
infix, *plntre, which generated a new verbal form unmarked for aspect, plntre, whence
nominal derivatives plnta sole of the foot, then plnta, plntre (n. sg., usually found in the
plural plntra), plntrum20, where the first term indicates tree-slip, tree-shoot, tree-cutting,
vine-cutting, but rarely tree-seedling (Virgil, Columella, Pliny, up to Isidore of Seville), the
second tree-cutting, tree-shoot, vine-cutting (Virgil, Calpurnius Siculus, Pliny etc., though

17
It is present in late Byzantine imperial sources in the diminutive p o vd i o n , e. g. in the 1050 Reggio Calabria
Metropolitan Inventary (GUILLOU, Vatican 1974), lines 86 (a jm p [e l o ]f u t o ;n p o d [i vw n ] r k [k a i ;]
e jl e v[a j ] o Jk t w v), 341 (o J K o u l o u vm b o " p o d [i vw n ] x i vl i a i d i a k o v [s i a ]), 460 (a jm p [e vl i o n ] x i l i v[w n ]
p o d [i vw n ]). For its use in mod. Calabrian Gk. see G. Rohlfs, Tbingen 21964: 414 p o vd i < p o vd i o n , plant, tree
(Bova, Roghudi), KARANASTASIS, 4. 234-235: p o vd i 2. S u n e d . k o r m o ;j , d e vn t r o u h } f u t o u ', o Jl o vk l h r o
t o ; d e vn t r o h } t o ; f u t o v (Bova, Roghudi).
It is doubtful that this represent an Afro-Asiatic calque, since no specialist in this field has yet demonstrated any
connection between West Chadic & Rift *YA - foot (OREL-STOLBOVA item 2568) and the more general tree
term that OREL-STOLBOVA (item 2577) indicate as *YAMA - , relating Egyptian /m / or / m/, as GARDINER,
4
1999: 478 (M1), would have it ( for the first form see ERMAN-GRAPOW, 1. 57, 3), with a Proto-Chadic *YAHAM-
. Note that PES for tree is also extremely common in medieval Latin, without there being any question of a
calque.
18
See Pokornys comments on Kurdish rzang in IEW 339 *ERHDH- (HERHD[H]-).
19
We thus do not consider plausible hypotheses such as that of ERNOUT-MEILLET (DELL4 43) Le latin na pas
trace du nom indo-europen de larbre, rpresent par hitt. taru, i. ir. dru, dru-, got. triu, v. sl. drvo, gr. d r u j ,
etc.. More plausible on the outcomes of the *HERHDH- theme are WALDE & HOFMANN (LEW 1. 62): kurd. r-
aus *ard- Baum in rzang Baumrost, durch Wind und Wetter verursachte dunkle Farbe auf den Bumen
(Bartholom IF. 9: 270f.), idg. *ardhos- Baum als Gewchs zu Wz. *er( )dh- wachsen, s. arduus.
20
The meaning nursery, tree-nursery is evident from Pliny on, esp. in Christian authors such as Rufinus,
Ambrose, Augustine, Ennodius, Leo the Great etc.
Ambroses plantaria seem to indicate more generally seedlings21), alongside the verb plntre
whose only meaning up to the Middle Ages is to plant vines or trees as in St. Jeromes
biblical versions, e.g. Leviticus 19, 23 plantaveritis [] ligna pomifera, Deuteronomy 28,
30 plantes [] uineam, Ps. 1, 3 or Ps. 79, 9 and 15-16 lignum [] [trans]plantatum, as
also in his New Testament versions, with either tree as object in Luke 13. 6 and 17, 6, or
vine as in Mark 12. 1, Matthew 21. 33, Luke 20. 9 and I Corinthians 9. 7 (for details see
TRUMPER-VIGOLO 1995: 69-71, TRUMPER 2005: 206-207). The Latin meaning was restricted to
a tree or vine structure and was not extended to the life-form. This restricted meaning, without
there being any shift to a life-form, is evident in Romance languages and dialects. Pianta is
essentially tree (arboreal structure) in Lombard dialects of N. Italy, while the North East has
Neo-Venetian piantn 1. vine-cutting, 2. willow-cutting, poplar-cutting, aspen-cutting, sapling
or tree-cutting usually in a restrictive sense, with the second meaning synonym of piantla, as
well as piant (f.) or piantada = piantarla as a row of vines, Friulian plante 1. tree-structure,
2. vine-structure, 3. row of vines, 4. collective for woody plants but also applied to others,
synonym of plantm[p], and plantn 1. tree-cutting, sapling, 2. row of vines. In the South of
Italy derivatives of PLANTA are Calabrian chjantuni, chjantilla, chjantunilla with meanings 1.
cuttings for chestnut trees, beeches and oaks (chestnuts or acorn-bearing trees), 2. tree-cuttings
more generally (extensive sapling is a rarer meaning here). In such dialects there is no
planta-derivative life-form, which seems the situation of most folk oral-tradition Romance.
This does not mean that outcomes of ARBOR do not exist, but they are usually highly
restrictive in sense, i. e. in Central Neo-Venetian we have lbore bianco (PD, Euganean Hills)
= albarla = bedlo (VI)/ belo (PD) for Betula pendula Roth (= Betula alba L.), lbore de
pin = pignara Conifer in general etc. The sense is usually that of large trees, Fagaceae and
Conifers, rather than of fruit trees, though modern extensions under Italian literary influence
are of course possible. One suspects that similar restrictions occur or occurred in oral-culture
Piedmontese and Provenal.
The shift from the loftiness image to that of a stump or sapling (something flat or
spread out) in the history of the Latin tree concept, which will eventually give us the life-
form plant, seems in origin to come from an already substitutive opposition tall woody
growth (ARBOR) vs. low woody growth (PLANTA > low woody growth such as a vine-
structure), where the restricted sense of tall tree for outcomes of arbor still exists in
Romance vernaculars. This restrictive meaning of late Latin planta and its opposition with
arbor, without any Latin feeling for the necessity of creating lexically a life-form22, seemed
first to enter into crisis in early Christian Latin translations of the Greek LXX in the Itala or
St. Jeromes of the Greek New Testament, where life-forms such as f u t o vn or its associated
verbs (f u ve i n / f u 'n a i ) required translation, later when we came to the first Germanic
translations of Christian and biblical texts into the Germanic vernaculars (see Trumper-Vigolo
2001: 14-16), with a shift in English weed (life-form) plant, with successively weeds

21
In origin plntre/ plntrum might well have indicated a dead support for vines as opposed to the live
support that was the Gaulish-origin Latin plus, which later came to indicate the trees or tree-stumps so used, i.
e. Acer campestris L., Acer platanoides L., though it also became extended to Populus nigra L., to gather from
some Romance outcomes. The origin of this second term is discussed at length in BELARDI-POLI 1975. The
obvious comparison is with OW. epill, mod. ebill, Old Breton ebill, mod. ibill, Old Cornish ebyl. The
geographical extension of outcomes goes way beyond any Gaulish-influenced territories or with possible Celtic
substratum, i. e. Central Veneto lpio, pio, pio Acer campestris L., or N. Calabria (Lausberg archaic area)
cchj n / cchj r Acer campestris L.
22
The nearest classical sources came to creating a life-form was in Senecas and others use of sata (n. pl.), first
as a collective for cultivated plants, then extensively for all plants.
taking the place of OE un-wod which was originally used of negative, harmful plants23, so
that we have the new opposition plant vs. weed from Middle English on as opposed to the Old
English wod vs. un-wod (TRUMPER-VIGOLO 2001: 14-25).
In conclusion we present schematically what appears to be the hypothetical dynamic process
at work in Latin, showing, in particular, shifting and replacement within the lexical and
semantic subsystem.

SCHEME 1A

Romance folk tradition basically maintains this situation, though the long-term effects of
literary languages may and do reorganize the whole subsystem of lexico-semantic oppositions.

3. Cultural and cognitive representations of classificatory models.

Another aspect, related both at the linguistic and extralinguistic levels (graphical
representation >< mental images) to the problem of the semantic and cognitive organisation of
some sectors of the natural world, consists in more frequent and usual representational devices
in often divergent cultural systems.

3.1. Cross-System Analogies: an hypothesis on their degree of generality.

Classification, as an aspect of general knowledge about the external world, also deals with
the graphic representation of all components of this world , from the smallest to the largest,
from the more imperfect to the perfect. An interesting consideration about natural elements
used for these classificatory purposes, from the Ancient World on (not only in Western
tradition but also in the Chinese progression image24), is that it makes reference to a number
of metaphors, which we may label amongst the second-order dispositions above. In
particular, we note that some Philosophy of Science exponents have stressed the relationship
that exists between the type of representation used and how one views space (the brains
landscaping). The two aspects considered are thus: graphic representations are adopted in
order to illustrate the disposition of natural elements and theoretical implications of such
choices, for example using, as shall be seen, a ladder or tree metaphor, which implied,
consequently, a different approach to classification according to the graphic representation
adopted. On this score, BARSANTI 1992 has assembled the most important and popular graphic
representations of the three natural kingdoms, or of their components, as can be seen in
scientific treatises in different periods of scientific history. His aim seems to have been to
stress the ideological beliefs and knowledge underlying such representations. Thus Nature can
be seen, represented and thought of, as a LADDER (hierarchy, progression), a MAP
(bidimensional territory, proximity, distance), or a TREE (roots, trunk, branches, but also
ancestors, siblings, fathers and sons). We can briefly treat some of the representations quoted
in the following manner:
THE LADDER

23
As in Wulfstans Homilies (Homily 73. 2) and unwod wodian (and weeding out the weeds).
24
It is surprisingly similar to Aristotles and roughly of the same period (see NEEDHAM 1983 for details).
 Some philosophers would have this to be an Aristotelian notion. One might rebut that the
basic idea of a progression and the up-and-down progression of natural kinds is ancient,
from at least Heraclitus on, but not that of the ladder, which, inspired perhaps by Jacobs
ladder in Genesis 28, finds its way into the analytical model proposed in much later times by
Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and eventually John Climacus (a movement upwards
towards perfection25), up to the Italian and French naturalists Vallisnieri and Bonnet in the
Seventeen Hundreds and the Frenchman Lamarck at the end of that century. As most
commentators observe, the LADDER concept follows from the medieval graphic representation
of the subordination (directionally below, thus inferior) and superordination relations
(directionally above, thus superior) between categories outlined in Porphyrys Isagoge 4. 20-
5. 15, though never explicit as an analytic image in either Plotinus or Porphyry. Above and
beyond considerations linked to the history of this concept and its positioning within a
historical and philosophical framework, we note that the representation is extremely fruitful in
creating projections. In an ethnobiological context it is difficult to postulate any classificatory
prevalence that be strongly or uniquely top-down or bottom-up. Many studies, from BERLIN
1992 on, have underscored, for example, the importance of an intermediate level: These taxa,
which have been referred to as covert categories[...] or covert complexes [...]
nonetheless form a highly significant part of the total organizational structure of
ethnobiological systems of classification (BERLIN 1992: 141)26. An obvious reference to
progression at the metaphorical level is presented in LAKOFF- TURNER (1989): with an obvious
recall of LOVEJOY 1936s Great Chain of Being. These authors postulate the existence of a
Great Chain of Metaphor:
- Humans: higher-order attributes (thought, character);
- Animals: institutional attributes, habits and behaviour patterns;
- Plants. biological attributes and behaviour;
- Complex Objects: structural attributes and functional behaviour;
- Natural Physical Things: natural physical attributes and natural physical behaviour.

A similar scheme proves useful in interpreting the projections shortly to be discussed, in

particular in interpreting lexical creation relative to the animal realm which refers to roles and
functions typical of human society.
THE TREE AND THE MAP
From a distant Afro-Asiatic past comes the Tree of Knowledge and Life (Genesis 2), from
a more nebulous past the IE Tree represented in Yggdrasil and the figure of Wodin. In a
philosophical sense, involved, that is, in classifying the created, Plotinus already had a plant-
image27 which percolated down into Porphyry, though there was no precise tree or ladder
image in their works. Even in Theophrastus (Historia Plantarum 1. 1. 11) the tree is an
exemplar of perfection not an analytical image for classifying28. It is the passage of Plotinus

25
For discussion see TRUMPER 2005: 71-75, MADDALON 2005: 13- 40.
26
See also MADDALON 2005: 26-29 for further observations on Berlins discussion and use of the intermediate.
27
Z wh;n; futou'' megivvstou dia;; panto;;" e[lqousan ajrch''" menouvvsh" in Enneads III. 8. 10 ([imagine] the life of a
very great plant which is diffused throughout [the plant], keeping constant its life principle), a plant which
generates and multiplies but whose ajrchvv (existential principle) remains because it is
ejn rJJiJvz$ ijdrumevvnh (stabilised in [its] root).
28
FRENCH 1994: 94 discussed Theophrastus examplar for the rest, choosing it apparently for its perfection. He
choose the tree. Its parts were then the standard by which the parts of other plants were judged, and their
differences are absence or presence, arrangement and shape. As for Theophrastus cf. Historia Plantarum 1. 1.
and Porphyry, not into the Latin tradition with Boethius translations, but into the Arab
tradition under Aristotles name (as a sort of Theologia Aristotelica) that produces the
analytical tree-image and a classificatory algebra based on it in Ramond Llulls work in the
Twelve Hundreds (Llull learnt Arabic), and from him later into Nicholas Cusas and Francis
Bacons conceptual frameworks (see NUBIOLA 1998 for elaboration). It is from here that
Leibnitz and successive natural sciences took their analytical metaphor.
The map metaphor follows form these first two29. We will not dwell on this particular
representation, since it is perhaps more widespread than imagined and so finely developed as
to enable us to envisage, in a graphical and not only ideological sense, relations between
entities. To revert to the Tree image, it is present in the formation of genealogical trees,
language family trees, tree diagrams in botanical and zoological classifications, a phylogenetic
tree-of-life which shows relations between taxonomic groups of organisms in terms of their
common descent according to the anatomical, biochemical, genetic and paloanthropological
criteria used, cladograms, etc. Its use, however, is rather problematic, since it ideologically
implies recourse to two orders of criteria:
(1) hierarchy (deriving from progression), which is already present in the other representations
discussed,
(2) the co-presence of categories on the same plain: this implies the co-presence of common or
shared characteristics, or, at the evolutionary level, the co-presence of extraneous elements in
linguistic contact and shift.
NATURE AS LANGUAGE.
Linnus called classification a LOQUELA, in which every name defined in itself a member
of a taxonomy, in an extreme form of NOMINALISM according to which, if a correct defining
name no longer exists, then cognition of the natural kind indicated perishes (Linnus,
Imperium Natur as preface to the Systema Natur 1758: 7 Nomina enim si pereunt, perit &
rerum cognitio etc.)30. This is relatively recent, from the Seventeen Hundreds on, though it
does have a precedent in Porphyrys claim31 that Athenodorus and Cornutus treated Aristotles
categories as LEXIS and GRAMMAR, and that they held that categories might well be evaluated
qu lexical items32. Obviously, the GRAMMAR metaphor is a consequence. Linked to this last
mode we might mention concepts referring to social entities or organisations such as the
family or tribe: in classical Greek the latter is a rather rare image, and only Xenophon comes
to mind. The earliest use of the geneavv image is already in Homer (Iliad 5. 265 for different
equine races), though the very word but rarely appears in prose. Its first prose appearance
with this meaning is most probably in Plato and is rather infrequent. On the other hand, gevnv o"
is not just family or offspring (as in Sophocles, dipus Tyrannus 1382-1383, or Philoctetes
222) but is already class (Plato, Republic 501e, Timus 17c,), race of oxen (very early on:
Iliad 20. 212), race of mules, genera etc., as we later find it commonly used in Aristotle
passim. Latin familia never meant this (TLL 6. 234-246); gens may be so used, though in a
poetic way. Even if genus can still be used in the sense of familia in later Latin, its sense from

11 pro;;" a}} kai; th;n ajnj afora;n tw'n' a[[llwn poiei'sqai divvkaion_ (is it right to make these the standards in
treating of the others?: A. Hort).
29
See BARSANTI 1992, for a general discussion, as also NUBIOLA 1998 and MADDALON 1998.
30
For further comments see BARSANTI 1992: 148 ff. and M. MADDALON, Classificazioni popolari della natura,
in VIGOLO-MADDALON-ZAMBONI (eds.) 2003: 17. This notion is also found in modern ethnolinguistics and
ethnoanthropology, see, for example, J. HILL, What is lost when names are forgotten, in SANGA-ORTALLI (eds.)
2004: 161-184.
31
On Aristotles Categories 4, 1. 59. 10.
32
Ibid. ta;; zhtouvvmena peri;; tw'n' levvxewn kaqo;; levc
v ei" (investigations on lexical categories as lexical
categories).
quite early on in prose is classificatory, a calk on Gk. gevnv o", and has no need of
exemplification.
Summing up we might postulate that underlying each metaphor there is a model for
classifying with its own characteristics, some with their own particular graphic
representations. The LADDER implies progression as well as ranking. In such a model stress is
laid on progressive perfection on an upward-moving axis or its opposite, though biologically
this creates complexity. The TREE-IMAGE is a bidimensional model based on the simultaneous
presence of ranking orders or hierarchies and co-existent, contemporary items on the same
level. The relation between items is geometrical. As for the third, we can say that, if nature is
LANGUAGE, man has the obligatory task of formulating rules for its interpretation (Linnus).
The most common and widespread social metaphor is referred to the FAMILY, implying that
items in nature are generated, that they themselves generate (Aristotle; Theophrastus), and
that they have natural relatives (Llorca; Ellen; Trumper & Maddalon in bibliography). Each
metaphor has something to say for itself but none offers a complete classificatory model, none
exhausts the problem of classificatory complexity in its entirety. The images themselves have
to do with mans classification of nature, whereas the modern problem we are facing is
accounting for mans perception and cognition of natural items.

4. Projecting Worlds on to Worlds.

4.1 Projection models
Another aspect deserving to be taken into consideration, for an exhaustive discussion of
general vs. culture-specific thinking about Nature, regards the several possibilities in name
creation, all well discussed in literature. An important aspect, a central one, is that of building
a network of relationships between worlds (for remarks in a similar vein see Amades 1988:
290, Llorca 2005: 352 ff.). In this manner one postulates that:
(a) -there are connections between water, air, sky and earth, and the creatures living in each of
these worlds;
(b) -we find more or less the same social relations among animals as among humans: there are
animals called kings, priests, judges, scholars etc.; there are family connections:
mother/father, son/ daughter, husband and wife (bridegroom and bride), daughter-in-law, as
well as godfather/ godmother etc.;
(c) -the same animals can be found either living on the ground, under the ground, or in the
water, in the sky, as if we were dealing with the same world, repeated with its own specific
modalities, in other media or habitats.
Examples of (b), found in many languages and dialects, are:

KING: Coris julis (S. Italy Calabrian cazzi rre, pisci rre = Sicilian pisci zubbu); Gadidae;
Regulidae.
PRIEST, FRIAR: Gadidae; Papilionidae; Caridridae; Asteraceae.
NUN: Paridae; Gadidae; Apocynacaeae; Dipsacaceae.
MOTHER: Gadidae; Gobiidae; Asteraceae
WIFE: Mustelidae; Doronicum sspp.
WIDOW: Arachnidae: Dipsacaceae.
SON/ DAUGHTER: Asteraceae.
GRANDMOTHER, -FATHER: Asteraceae.
UNCLE, AUNT: Caradridae; Strigidae (Titoninae); Oriolidae; Canidae; Selachidae.
DAUGHTER-IN-LAW: Scolopendrum; Mustelidae; Asteraceae.
GODFATHER, -MOTHER: Mustelidae; Oriolidae.
SCHOLAR: Serranidae; Gadidae.
MERCHANT: Scarabeidae.
TRADESMAN (Master): Turdidae; Emberizidae.
POLICEMAN, GUARD: Whales; Selachidae (Sphyrna zygaena Raf.).
WHORE: Selachidae (Squalus acanthias L.).

The intensive interplay between natural habitats and their inhabitants discussed in (c), can
be interpreted as projection, i.e. the characteristic of an animal, or some of its prerogatives, are
extended to another one, living in another medium or habitat. Many employ folk repertoires as
a source for examples of similar ways of naming which use internal and external projective
models. In particular, what seems to emerge from these researches is the different, and not
equivalent, knowledge of air inhabitants (birds) vis--vis water inhabitants (fish). For
example, it is obvious that in the first case the possibility and the opportunity of seeing birds is
quite different from that of observing fish, first contacts with fish being in all probability by
touch, as developed below. Their different status and their different types of proximity to
humans are plausibly at the base of story telling and folk motivation and re-motivation of their
names.
Research into motivation in name-forming processes is quite interesting, both for
ethnolinguists and linguists involved in historical reconstruction. The former reconstruct
holistically cross-referenced systems of specific lexical sectors which lie between the
denotative and connotative levels, the latter employ their efforts to work out the linguistic (or
semantic) elements needed, even when obscure or absent, in order to fill in gaps, whether they
be cultural or linguistic, so as to make the name creation processes transparent again.
Amongst varying nomenclatural processes, we find in all linguistic systems perhaps the
best represented is that based on a sort of solidarity between elements belonging to differing
worlds or spheres of experience. Culturally it may concern theories in which there are
precise parallels between plants and animals, between animals and humans, both from the
point of view of morphological characteristics and that of comparable functions, even to the
point of possessing a comparable physiognomy. A marginal, less important tradition, certainly
with its own particular relevance, which is associated with traditional botanical and animal
biology treatises, has followed this line of thought in an in-depth manner. It covers an
important area of folk belief and folk knowledge, but it is difficult in this approach to separate
out both aspects in a clear way. On this score compare GIOVANBATTISTA DELLA PORTAs
Phytognomonica which follows theories dictated by what is called natural magic, of which
he was a keen supporter: in his study he includes in a systematic fashion a plethora of
parallelisms between the Plant Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom and Human Beings. The
privileged aspect here, repeatedly underscored by him, is the existence of reciprocal
relationships that establish precise correspondences and affinities, after long enquiry into the
phenomenology and much research into properties and form. Plants and animals, even in a
more precise fashion than their organs and parts, are associated with human organs and enter
into a sympathetic or solidarity relation with them. They have effects on illnesses and
ailments which human organs suffer from.33 The theorisations of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire might
be described in quite similar terms, though they are rather different at the cultural level and
from the standpoint of the period in which they were written: they are to be found in his Les
principes de philosophie zoologique. Discours prliminaire la Thorie des analogues.

33
The Phytognomonica is composed of eight books, in one of them is a particular and precise classification of
plants divided by habitat into seven classes. In another it lists plants used to describe animals and so on and so
forth.
Nicole Revel brings this author to our consideration when she refers to some of his more
interesting theorisations, even though they were given scant attention by contemporaries such
as Cuvier and Lamarcke. These come out in his observations on similarities and dissimilarities
between living beings; they are also brought to light in linguistic processes which use
modification such as sea-, river-, or in the use of the same terms to describe animals living
in different habitats.
This way of understanding classificatory acts is central to the thought of many other
scholars, cf. on this score Saint-Hilaires observation
Les tres innombrables de la nature se ressemblent sous certains rapports et diffrent sous
dautres, toutes les langues et tous les peuples lattestent, and again La nature ne cre que
des individus. Cest nous qui crons les espces, par labstraction des diversits et la
combinaison des ressemblances, combinaison laquelle nous imposons un nom collectif. Les
classifications sont trs nombreuses et bases souvent sur des principes opposs (pg.209) 34.
Beyond the general sense of this theoretical position, we might remark that it may be
related to the school of thought that substantially denied the realty of natural groupings as
organised and hierarchised in official Western Science. A similar point of view, though from a
rather different perspective35, has recently been introduced by INGOLD 2005, when he states
that
To identify another person is to acknowledge their uniqueness, to pick them out from the
crowd on the grounds of a familiar face, voice or gesture. To identify an animal or plant, to
the contrary is to deny its uniqueness, to set aside any individual idiosyncrasies in order to
highlight characteristics shared with others of the same or similar kind. In this process of
identification, knowledge does not extend outwards along chains of connection, but is rather
built upwards, incorporating particulars observed at ground level into ever higher levels of
categorical inclusion. (INGOLD 2005: 162).
This process is identified by the author as that typical of authoritative knowledge of natural
history and is explicitly organised in a bottom-up fashion, as he says:
To establish a relation between particulars is not to go across, tracing a connecting line from
one to the other, but to go up, to a level at which their particularity is filtered out such that
each may be considered an exemplar of the same class. Conversely, to recover the
particularity of things is not to connect but to divide, focusing on difference rather that
similarity (ibid. pg. 162: the same observation is repeated in a different form elsewhere in the
same study, as also in INGOLD 2011).
We might close this section repeating certain of the observations made at they very
beginning, in particular with regard to the naturalness or not of certain divisions created
within a supposed natural continuum, as well as on the theorised and real existence of
natural kind objects. We might also, however, bring attention to our personal practical
experience as fieldworkers, from the point of view of eliciting information on single items and
the eventual creation of inclusive groupings and/ or categories. Without trying to misrepresent
informants in any way, this is surely the most delicate and complex of operations. At this
point one might even create groupings which use as defining features criteria that differ
greatly from those of official biology or that even deal with inexistent animals.
The first case deals with groupings that distinguish insects, or better wugs (some), small
animals (amphibia, small reptiles), from others belonging to the same zoological families by
the use of criteria such as lives alongside humans, lives inside/ outside human habitations,

34
GEOFFROY SAINT- HILAIRE (Les principes de philosophie zoologique. Discours prliminaire la Thorie des
analogues. Paris, Pichon et Didier Libraires, 1830.
35
A less extreme version is to be found in a global vision of relationships which many ethnic cultures develop
vis--vis beings.
lives near/ far from human settlements and so on, with emphasis laid on their spatial relation
with humans (see MADDALON 2004: 44). The second case treats imaginary animals (products
of linguistic invention and playfulness) that often correspond to some period in the ageing/
growth process of the same but real animal. In such cases the relevant aspect is the cultural
importance assigned the particular animal in a nomenclatural process that actually multiplies,
as it were, exemplars of that animal (cfr. LLORCA 1991 on fictitious whistling thrushes, le
tourde chifflant, and TRUMPER 2005: 465-466, 469 ff. on imaginary hares, 475-480 on
medieval chameleons as classificatory jollies, and 481-482 on the concept of animal fictum
compositum in antiquity).
Concluding this paper summarizing the problems we have tackled with, and some of the
more interesting attempts to solve them, is not due to any ideological ecumenical choice that
prevents us from pointing out our point of view on the question. It depends instead on the
consideration that the way in which human beings look at- perceive- talk about Nature, and all
the derived cultural practices, are so complex and differently orientated as to require an
adequate INCLUSIVE model for understanding and describing them.
SCHEME 1A

*D[O]RU- (IEW 214-17) *T[O]RW- (GI 525)

tree + tree-trunk (trncus) > trunk of body
(*DRU-N-KO-)

tree tree-trunk wooden vessel

(tra, tr)

hardness
(drus)

Ha[E]RD-OS- (new opposition)

tall, lofty

tall tree low tree

plntre
plntrum

rbor
 SCHEME 1B

TREE-ISHNESS

tree-ishness height, loftiness

tree high, tall, lofty

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