brent berlin-covert categories and folk taxonomy

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Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies

B R E N T B E R L I ND E N N I S E. B R E E D L O V E

University of California, Berkeley

P E T E R H. R A V E N

Stanford University

Much of the recent work i n ethnoscience has been concerned w it h the nature of folk taxonomies, a n often

stated definition of which r e p i r e s that &f ol k taxa be monolexemically labeled. Th is pape r offers evi-dence that unlabeled categories may also be of crucial taxonomic significance, and w e feel that i t i s in -appropriate to treat such categories apart from the named taxonomic entities of the system. More im-

portanUy, evidence presented indicates that by recognizing unnam ed taxa one ma y gain an understand-ing of the structure of a particular semantic domain that i s actually obscured i f one focuses solely o n

lexically labeled units.

of th e productive work in ethno-

MUCHcience today derives from collabora-tive research in cert ain area s of ethnobiology(see Colby 1966, Stu rtev ant 1964 for a surveyof these materials). It is often found t h at thesemantic structures uncovered by such re-search are hierarchic in their formal char-acteristics. Thus they resemble the classifica-tory structu res conventionally employed inthe biological sciences and have generallybeen termed ( jo lk) taxonomies (Conklin 1962a,1962b, 1964; Du rbin 1966; Fra ke 1961, 1962;

Gregg 1954; Ka y 1966; Louns bury 1964;Romney n.d.).

Most writers agree on a definition of a folktaxonomy similar to the following: “A systemof monolexemically labelled folk segregates re-lated by hierarchic inclusion . ..” (Conklin1962a: 128). B u t must the segregates, o r cate-gories, included in such taxonomies necessarilybe monolexemically labeled? Or is Keesing cor-rect in asserting “If we insist t h at the descrip-tive un its of a n ethnograph y be lexically la-

belled, we are likely to arriv eat

a very limitedso rt of description: a n ethno graph y of howpeople talk abou t what they do, not w hat theydo or expect each other to do. .. .There isample evidence th at expectations an d distinc-tions need no t be directly mapped in language”(1966 :23)?

In questioning the utility of restrictingethnograph ic description to labeled categories,Keesing has pointed the way toward a reex-amination of one of the most fundamentalassumptions of ethnoscience. It is question-

Accepted for publication March 13. 1967.

able, however, whether “ample evidence” isactually available to s uppo rt his position. Th epurpose of the present pape r is in par t to cor-rect this deficiency.

TZELTAL PLANT TAXONOMY

I n our research in Tzelta l botanical ethnog-raphy,’ we have found it possible to deter-mine with a high degree of reliability the m ajoroutlines of th e named taxonomic st ruc tu re ofthe plant world for Tzeltal speakers (Berlin,Breedlove and Raven in preparation). In the

course of this work, we have discovered ma nymeaningful and culturally revealing categoriesrelated by inclusion that are not convention-ally, monolexemically labeled. I n fac t, ma ny ofthese categories receive no habitual linguisticdesignations of any sort. We feel th at i t is in-appro priate to tre at such categories separatelyfrom the named taxonomic entities of the sys-tem. More importantly, we shall present evi-dence that by recognizing unnamed taxa,one may gain an understanding of the struc-

ture of a particular semantic domain that isac tua lly obscured if one focuses solely onlexically labeled u nits .

A t th e highest level of the Tze ltal pla nttaxonomy, there is no monolexemic taxon, or“unique beginner,” in which all other Tzeltalplant taxa are included. Nevertheless, it hasbeen possible to establish, by the proceduresoutlined below, that animals and plants aredistinguished a s two s eparate unnamed classesby Tzelta l speakers.a I n the absence of an y“uniq ue beginner,” the highest level in Tzeltal

plan t taxonomy is represented by four majo rplant-class lexemes in which some eighty per-

290



[ B E R L I N , BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies 291

% ( i = l , Z , . .., 94)indicatesaspedfictaxondominatedbyfe?.

y i ( i = , Z . . . ,28) indicates a non-speafic axon immediately p d e d y fc?.

*.(i 1,2.. 3 ., ) indicatesa taxon in direct c d r u s t with to?.

For i<138, xi s imm ediately preceded byte?. For 139Si1194,r i

in not imm ediately preceded byIs?.

FIGURE . Schematic representation of the Tzeltal plant taxon le? (trees) and its included membersindicating the paucity of midlevel named taxa.

cent of all Tzeltal pla nt names are included. Inaddition to and coordinate with these majorpl an t classes are a series of taxa t h a t are for themost part botanically unusual when judgedby the morphological criteria that definethe four major classes: te ? (trees), ?ak' (vines),?ak (grasses), and wumal (herbs). These m inorclasses are considered to be separate, un-affiliated groups, and include, for example,certain epiphytes, cacti, agaves, and bam boos.

Within these coordinate major and minorpla nt classes are grouped all of th e Tze ltalspec i j c taxa, i.e., those taxa which include noother members. Th ere are, however, very fewmidlevel plant categories in the taxonomy t h atare lexemically labeled. We have selected the

major plant class te?, as described by one ofour 50 informants, to illustrate this generallack of midrange named taxa.

It will be noted in Figure 1 tha t the taxonte? immediately includes no less than 166mem-bers ( X I , XZ , . - , z s ) .Ex-actly 138of the taxa in this contra st set, or 83percent, are specific taxa. The remaining 28

terms of th e con trast set ar e nonspecific, eachimmediately including from two t o seven spe-cific taxa . A t no po int does one find subhierar-chies that exceed more than two levels indep th. Th e tota l number of specific taxa i nthis class, for this informant, is 194.

An example of a midlevel, nonspecific taxonis hihte? (oak), as seen in Figure 2.

T he linguistic stru ctu re of th e names sakyok

- , ZISS; y ~ ,a, -

and Eikinib do no t in themselves indicate theirinclusion in hihte?, although these plants areconsistently considered as kinds of hihte? byTzelta l speakers.

The remaining three major classes, wumal,

?uk, and ?ak' show a similar paucity of non-specific taxa.

I t

hi&* (oak)

- - - -

Botan ical ranges of each spxific taxon:

Zibinib:QiicrcusOcalnwrngnSiSTrel , ucrcus mexicam Ilumb.

sakyok: Quncus cundiC0n.s Nee. Qiicrciis CrassiJolia Humb. &

k ' m d hikle?: Quercus s rgoo in r s i s Liebm., Quncus Polymmpha

cu?put hiklo?: Qusrcw Juncular is Neb, Quncus rugosa Nd,

Cis hihlc?: Qucrcus cmrugda Hook.

& Bonpl ,&Quacur supotifoli0 Liebm.

Bonpl. in part.

Schlecht.&Cham.

&Qunnrs crasrijolioHumb. & Bonpl. in part.

Figure 2. An example of the named midlevel taxon

hihte? (oak) and its included members.



292 American Anthropologist

&’

[70, 1968

?ac’amle?IA&Rakolc?cs Pahohl ?dEdl ?&tat4 €’if ?ararCndc?Y 9ckmonef %amI 7ih#’allc91 ? iS imtc~ ,I - . ., xU 8 3,

/I \x119I\ 140 ’ * ’ Z1U $146 2146 XI41

F I G ~ E. Portion of the con trast set immediately included in th e taxon le?. Horizontalordering of the coordinate taxa is arbitrarily alphabetical.

COVERT MIDLEVEL CATEGORIES

It is possible, of course, to acce pt th e struc-ture in Figure 1 as displaying all of the cul-turally obligatory inclusion relationshipsamon g the relevant tax a of the class le? a n d t oproceed to other problems. Such a decisionwould depend, i n pa rt, on one’s definition of ataxonomy. Thus Conklin, in his classic studyof Hanunbo ethnobotany (1954), describesa similarly shallow plant taxonomy, but goeson to note th at other “midgroupings of p lant sare made, of course, b u t not according t o a

structured terminologically-identifiable sys-tem” (1954:97).

If such actual or potential midgroupings ofplant taxa are ignored, however, it becomesdifficult if not imposs ible to develop a rationalefor horizontally ordering the individual planttaxa w ithin each of th e many-mem bered con-trast sets. Let us retu rn our focus to a portionof the contrast set immediately included int e7 to clarify th is point. If one relies solely onthe relationships revealed by the taxonomic

classification of the nam ed tax a, th e horizontalordering of the immediately included items isnecessarily arbitrary. The order could pre-sumably be alphabetical, a s seen in Figure 3.The items might also be arranged in terms oftheir relationships as displayed by th e general-purpose Linnaean system of classification.Such an arrangement would clearly no t be t hemost ethnographically relevant o ne possible.

One alternative to the arbitrary ordering ofcoordinate taxa derives from the intuition,mentioned above, that unlabeled, midlevelcategories exist for our informants. If suchcategories can be shown to exist, one mightexpect th at smaller subsets of terms within a

named contrast set would be conceptuallygrouped together. These unnamed subsets

would then have a high information content

with considerable psychological rele~ance.~They would proceed directly from the special-purp ose, highly specific taxonom y of our in -formants. (O ur use of “general purpose” v s .

“special purpose” taxonom y is outlined m orefully in Berlin, Breedlove and Raven, 1966:275.)

TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS

I n general, we set out to d etermine the ex-istence of culturally significant subgroupings

by employing several field procedures. Thefirst consisted of sim ple ethnogra phic ob serva -tions an d recordings of inform ants’ com me ntson plants in natu ral contexts. During the pro-cess of botanical co llecting of some 10,000specimens with native informants, much evi-dence was accumulated that suggested thatsome plants in the same named contrast se twere more closely related, cognitively, thanothers. These data included discussions ofethnobotanical features of certain groups ofplants, visual dem onstra tions of similar plants,

imp ortance a s food, herbs, firewood, an d so on.Such observations, while sporadic and anec-dotal in character, were imp ortant checks onth e results of the m eth od s of group ing dis-cussed below. Th us , the ma ny ho urs of in-formal discussion with inform ants in the fieldwere extremely helpful in providing insightsinto w hat might or might not prove to be a po-tential ethnobotanical sem antic dimension.‘

A second method we have found useful insearching for possible subgroupings withincontrast sets of large numbers was to deter-mine the extent to which informants sub-divided lists of plant names. Instruction con-cerning the task of grouping was accom-plished a s follows. Several names of pla nt san d animals, written on sep arate slips of pape r,



B E RL I N, B RE E DL O VE , & RAVE N] Folk Taxonomies 293

were presented to an informant. H e was theninstructed to read the names on each slip an dto put into separate groups those that were“mo st like one other.” Th e Tzeltal interroga-tion was as follows:

bdik sbil ya shun sba sok(Which names group with on e another?)

Info rm ant s had no problem in grouping thesenames correctly, animal names being placedin one set, plant names in another. These da ta,along with observation in natu ral contexts, in-dicated th e existence of an unnam ed group,“plants,” as mentioned above.

Following th e grouping of p lan ts an d ani-mals, a set of p lan t names was presented to

each informant, some of th e names belongingto one major Tzeltal class, some to another,e.g., names for two kinds of trees a s opposed toth e name for a pa rticular kind of herb. In-structions were th e same as those given for th egrouping of an imal an d plan t names. As ex-pected, informan ts had no difficulty in group-ing names that belonged to the same majorTzeltal plant class.

Once it became clear tha t the ta sk was un-derstood, th e nam es of t he immediately in-cluded taxa of each major class nam e, writtenon slips of pap er, were presented to in formantswith instructions to read through the lists andplace in separate piles those names which ap-plied to plants t ha t were judged to be similarto one anoth er. We found tha t such subgroup-ings of closely semantically relate d item swithin the same contrast set is easily accom-plished by trained informants. We have alsofound the resulting sets to be highly reliable.The ability of native informants to performsuch grouping tasks, in conjunction with the

reliability of the resulting grou ps, is a goodindication of th e psychological saliency of t heclassification.6

Our inquiry did not stop a t merely requiringinformants to subgroup items within the samecontrast set of named specifics. W e also foundit possible to determ ine many of th e concep-tual features that were shared among plantswithin each s et, as well as to d etermine cer tainfeatures that distinguished items within a set.The procedures outlined below also indicatedth at some of the first se ts isolate d by infor-man ts included yet other imp ortant, unlabeledconceptual groupings.

Ha vin g demonstrated the existence of suchsubgroupings, we used three main proceduresto investigate their defining conceptual fea-

tures. The first was the so-called kiads-test,used by Romney and D’Andrade (1964) intheir analysis of American kinship data andfirst employed ethnographically b y D ’Andrade(n.d.) in his early T zeltal ethnobotanical work.T h e procedure requires inform ants to specifywhich item i n a se t of thre e is “most different”from the others. T he results, when run for alllogical triads in a se t of te rms, provide some in-dication of th e to tal co gnitive sim ilarity ofeach term to all others in the set. This proce-dure is clearly restricted to sets of relativelysmall size because of th e larger an d largernumbers of triads th at a n informan t mu st ex-amine as the number of items in the set in-creases.’J

A second procedure in the discovery ofcharacteristics of ethnobotanical relevance isthe construction of folk keys by informants.Key s are routinely employed fo r biological pur-poses and consist of a series of successive bin-ar y divisions of a se t of organism s, th e chara c-teristics used for each division being specified,until each organism in the set has been distin-guished from all others. I n our field procedure,an informant was presented w ith a set of pl an tnames that he had earlier isolated as beingcognitively similar to one another. He wasthen asked to construct a key for this set oforganisms, accounting for all the includedforms. By this means, the informant was re-quire d to verbalize all of t he concep tual dis-tinctions he has utilized in making the divi-sions. Such keys provide useful data whencompared with the results obtained by othertests.

Our third procedure consists of paired com-

parisons of all lexical item s in a particular de-limited set of plant names. I n completing this

task the informant was requested to compareall logical pairs in a ny set in ter ms of all th esimilarities and differences that he felt wererelevant for an y pair. Such characteristics asthe m anner of s tem growth, size an d shape ofthe stem and leaves, internode length, andfruit size an d shape ha ve been utilized in thesediscriminations. Responses obtained by thismethod can later be converted into a stand ardnotation for distinctive features that allowsthe investigator to scan “componential defini-tions]’ of a set of term s, and , as a consequence,bring together those terms tha t are most simi-lar in terms of those features judged im po rtan tby the informant.

All of these simple techniques can be em-ployed by any intelligent] semiliterate infor-



294 American Anthropologist [70, 968

man t. T o illustrate their use, we have selectedone informant’s subgrouping of a set of plantnames for “vines” (7ak’) . This classificationwas similar to that constructed by other in-forman ts presented with the same situa tionand is selected for illustrative purposes only.Th is partic ular set of p lan ts nam es was iso-lated by the so rting procedure described earlieran d consisted of th e following Tze ltal terms’:

bohE (large gourd) Lugenaria sucreria

cu (bottle gourd) Logenaria sueraria

c’ol (squash) Cucurbita peg0 L.t’um (pumpkin) Cucurbita moschata

mayil (perennial squash) Cucurbilaficifolia

(Mol.)S andl.

(Mol.)Standl.

Duch.

Bouch6

There are ten possible triads for this set offorms. One informa nt, when presented w ith alllogical triads, made the responses shown inTable 1.Th e number of times any two lexemesin t he set were classed together (i.e., judgedmost similar in any triad) is given in Tab le 2.Table 2 indicates that bohE and mayil werenever classed together in any triad. On theother hand, mayi l was classed twice with c’01

and twice with t’um; i.e., it was judged to beequally similar to both. The pairs bohE-cu andc’ol-E’um were judged to be clo sest in threetriads.

The divisions made in a folk key con-structed for the same set of plant names areshown graphically in F igure 4.T he conceptualdimensions with their ap prop riate values ver-balized for this key are indicated in T able 3.

Small letters with subscripts indicate valuesfo r a particular dimension. It can be seen

TABLE. AL LPOSSIBLE TRIADSN SE T OF

FIVESEMANTICALLYRELATEDTZELTALLANT NAMES

1) baht cu G’Ol

2) boht

3 ) boht

boht

boht

boht

4, -, -

7) GU

8, -9)

10) C’OZ

--cu

cu

cu

c’o1

6’01

t ’um

c ’o l

c’ol

t’um

E’um

-t’um

m a y 3

t’um

rnayil

mayil

t’um

m a y 2

mayil

m a y 2

--

TABLE. NUMBERF TIMES NY Two ITEMS ERE

OF FIVECONCEPTUALLYELATED “VINE” NAMESJUDGED “MOST SIMILAR’’ IN ANY T R I A D CO~WRI SED

boht cu mayil c’ol t’um

c’ol

--I _ _t’nim I

readily th at the ordering of plan t names in thekey is identical in hierarchical structure toth at derived from the triads data.

The results of our third procedure, that of

paired comparisons for all item s in t he set, areshown in Table 4. Not all dimensions areequally relevant for all terms in the set. Thusdimension G, color of the me at of t he frui t, isnot relevant, and hence omitted, for thegourds bohE and cu. Fru it size (dimension F ) isrelevant for bohE and GU, but these gourds

range over both of the values for the dimen-sion (large and small). Consequently, theletter for the dim ension of size app ears w ith-ou t subscripts for bohE and CU.

We noted earlier th at th e number of sharedfeatures between two items in a set provides anindex of the ir overall similarity a s judged byth e informant. T h e number of shared featuresfor every pair of i tem s in th e se t is shown in a

TABLE. CONCEPTUALINENSIONSTILIZEDN

TEE CONSTRUCTIONF THE TZELTALOLK

KEY GIVENIN FIGURE

(A) “Kind of vine” [uniting feature for the totalset]: Herbaceous creepers with large leavesand similar fruits and flowers.

(B) vine texture: b1 hairy

ba spiny

(C) fruit shape: c1 disk-shapedc2 elongated

d~ blackish [relatively dark]dn whitish [relatively white]

(D) vine-leaf color:

(E) flesh color of fruit: el whitecs yellow

Underlined terms w e n judged “most different” n each triad.



BERLIN, BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies

A

295

mayil, c’ol, E’um

\d z )

6’01, E’um

bohEA1c (CZ) mayilL! c ’01LA’um

(large gourd) (bottle gourd) (perennial squash) (squash) (pumpkin)

FIGURE . Tzelta l folk key constructed for set of five conceptually related “vines.”

matr ix in Table 5 for comparison with thefindings made b y t he triad an d key m ethods ofevaluation. As might be expected, these threesets of d at a correspon d closely. Th u s bohE andcu are similar in t ha t they share five ou t of sixpossible features, but bohE shares only onefeature with mayil, E’um, and 201 , and cu

shares only two with mayil and none (otherth an th e uniting value of th e set) with E’um orc’oZ. The squash mayil is approximately

equally similar to E’um and c’ol, sharing threeo u t of seven features with E’um and four outof seven fea tures with c’ol. Finally, as our otherda ta would suggest , t’um a nd 6’01 share five outof seven features, showing them to be con-ceptually ver y similar.

From the botanical point of view, th e Tzel-tal t reatment given this se t is qui te under-standable. First , the subset of five Tzeltalnames, al though not included in a named

TABLE . FOLK EATUREEFINITIONSF TZELTALLANTAMESF FIVECONCEPTUALLYELATED

“VINES” S COMPILEDRO M PAIRED O ~ ~ ~ A R I S O N S-.

Dimensions Va lUL s

(A) stem texture(B) leaf texture(C) flower color(D ) f rui t shape

(E) leaf color(I;) fruit size j1large;jz small( G ) color of meat of fruit

a1 hairy; a2 spineybl hairy; b2 spineyc1white; c t yellowdl disk-like;dn elongatedel relatively light; cz relatively dark

g, yellow; g2 white

Dejinilions o j planl names

boht

mayilt’umC ’ O l

CU




TABLE. MAT- INDICATING NUMBERF SHAREDFEATURESOR ALLLOGICALAIRSOF PLANT

NAaaEs DEFINEDN TABLE

bohE GU mayil t’um c’ol

C ’ l l l

Figuresin parentheses indieatepotentialnumber of dimension8

on which wo plants might be compared.

Tzeltal taxon, does form a morphologicallycoherent grou p. Of all mem bers of the familyCucurbitaceae familiar to Tzeltal speakers,these five are th e only mem bers of th e tri beCucurbiteae (Jeffrey 1962). The y have largerflowers than any other member of the familyknown to these people, and are the only oneshaving large fruits with tough rinds. Withinthis group, the first obligatory division cor-

responds to a recognitionof

the major ‘differ-ences between the group comprizing boht andcu and that including mayil, t ’um, a n d c’ol.

The gourds boht and cu both belong to thespecies Lagenaria siceraria, although theirfruits are very different an d provide t he basisfor their being given distinctive Tzel tal names.The other three items in the subset-mayil,Pu m , an d c’ol-represent different species ofthe genus Cucurbita. Lagenaria is a member of

W ’ (vines)

bohE GU mayil 6’01

the subtribe Benincasinae, whereas Cucurbitabelongs t o a different subtribe, Cucurbitinae.

It is interesting now to compare the taxo-nomic structure of this subset when one re-stricts it to labeled taxa, on the one hand, andwhen one includes empirically validated un-named taxa, on the other. It is clear that theamount of cul tura lly revealing information dis-played in Figure 6 is significantly greater thanth at in Figure 5 .

S U MMA R Y AND CONCLUSIONS

T o summarize, we have presented empiricalevidence tha t unlabeled taxa do exist for Tzel-tal speakers. T he nodes of th e hierarchy gener-ated by our eliciting procedures are not arbi-

trarily spaced and not permutable in theirvertical or sequential ordering; therefore theyclearly imply a taxonomic structure. Thisstructure is not a n arbitra ry key generated interms of culturally irrelevant oppositions ofour own invention (cf. Conklin 1962a:135-136; 1962b:90 -91; 1964:39-41). Much addi-tional evidence that we have accumulatedsupp orts th e existence of these unnam ed tax aand clearly points to their cultural validity,both in the p articular example discussed in de-tail and in many analogous instances. (The

taxon t e7 , for example, now is believed to im-mediately include no less than thirty un-named taxa.)

- - -‘ak’ (vines)

Tribe Cuawbiteac

Lagenaria Cucurbita

Cucurbita p e p 0

FIGURE5. Taxonomic structure tha t indicates FIGURE . Taxonomic structu re that indicates bothlabeled and unlabeled taxa for a subset of “vines.”abeled taxa only for a subset of “vines.”



B E R L I N , B R E E D L O V E , & R A V E N ] Folk Ta x o n o mi es 297

There is a widely held view that the “con-ce pt of th e genus is as old as folk-science it-sell” (Davis & Heywood 1963:103). It seemsclear t h at this an d other midlevel categories intaxonomic hierarchies have grown up syn-thetically, by the grouping of kinds of plantsand animals. Specifically, the labeling of ini-t ial ly unnamed categories th at prove t ohave cultural validity and predictivenessabout the included forms would appear tohave been a principal route t o the verbaliza-tion of more an d mo re complex hierarchies. W ehave already considered a probable later stepin this process in t he example of hihtel. I n t hedevelopment and rationalization of formalLinnaean taxonomy, genus, family, order and

many other midlevel categories have been de-fined and named as a means of reflecting in-creasing am ou nts of information abo ut the

organisims bein g classified. It is extremely in-structive to examine the structure of a folktaxonomy such as th at of the Tzeltal, in whichthese midlevel categories are presen t in a n in-cipient, unlabeled form. I n fa ct, these findingshelp us to better understand the developmentand structure of our own “general-purpose”taxonomy.

Our dat a ca n also be interpreted as havingsome bearing o n the somewhat neglected hy-pothesis of Miller (1956) and Wallace (1961)concerning the capacity of Homo sapiens t ostore and process information. Wallace’s hy-pothesis states that “irrespecfive of race, cul-ture, or evolutionary level, culturally institu-tionalized f o l k taxonomies will lzot contain morethan 26 entities and consequently will not requiremore than six orthogonally related binary dimen-sionsjor the definitions of all of th e terms” (Wal-lace 1961:462). Th e maximum number of en-

ti t ies that can be contained in a space of sixbinary dimensions is sixty-four and presum-ably no folk taxonomy should contain morethan this number of folk taxa.

However, i t is clear th at Wallace is not re-ferring to the folk taxonomy in to to, bu t t o a nyparticular contrast set contained within i t(Colby 1966:lS). (See Wallace’s [1961:462]

definition of a taxonomy as “a gr ou p of sym -bols . . . which denote mutually exclusive butjointly ex haustive sub sets of re feren ts within a

set denoted by a cover symbol [immediatelyincluding taxon?] ”)Should this interpretation be correct, i.e., a

maximum num ber of 64 i tems in an y particularcontrast set, our data concerning unnamedcategories would tend to support Wallace’s

position. Thus, conceptually, each of our mul-timembered “named” c ontra st sets a re i n a c t u -ali ty subdivided in to several mo re cognitivelyamenable contras t sets, ma ny of which ar e in-

cluded in unnamed taxa. By recognizing un-labeled taxa, our dat a show clearly t ha t nocon trast set exceeds 64 items, while most con-tain considerably fewer tax a th an ten.

I n conclusion, we would like to urge the test-ing of superficially shallow taxonomic hierar-chies for the presence of unlabeled midleveltaxa. W e believe that our evidence shows th atsuch taxa c anno t be ignored as insignificant. Inthe present paper we have outl ined severalprocedures by which th e investigation of suchhierarchies can be carried out, but doubtless

many others can and eventually will be de-vised. A recognition of the exis tence and anevaluation of th e taxonomic stat us of such un-labeled categories will usually b e foun d to leadt o a more psychologically revealing and cul-turally meaningful description of the under-lying conceptual structure of a particular do-main, a s t ructure that may otherwise remainobscure.*

NOTES

1 This research has been financed by the NationalScience Foundation under the following grants:NSF GS 383, “Comparative ethnobotany of twoTzeltal speaking communities,”A. Kimball Romneyand Peter H. Raven, Co-principal investigators;NSF GS 1183, “Studies in Tzeltal botanical eth-nograpby,” Brent Berlin and Peter H. Raven, Co-

rincipa investigators. This support isgratefully ac-E owledged. The work is being carried out primarilyin the Tzeltal-speaking municipio of Tenejapa,Chiapas, Mexico, although new research is beingundertaken in several additional Tzeltal dialects. Ageneral statement of the physical characteristics ofthe area is given in Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven(1966). Relevant bibliographic material on linguis-

tic, ethnographic, or botanical work completed ornow in progrese in highland Chiapas may be ob-tained by writing the authors.

ZThere is some evidence that the noun+nouncompounds tepak’ (Ic’ [tree]+%ak’ [vine]) and tan-balam (tan [ s naRc ] ~b&m[tiger]) function as lexicalitems indicating lants” and “animals” respec-tively. A re ort to tEs effect isgiven in M etzger andWilliams 6966). We have been able to verifythis finding for two Tzeltal informants. However,long periods of elicitation with many additional in-formants lead us to question the widespread appli-cability of these forms with the general meanings“plants” and “animals.” The vast majority of our

informants indicate that tepaak’ more appropriatelydesignates “forest” or “woods” while t a d a l um re-fersonly to a small subset of large four-legged mam-mals.

a An interest in unlabeled categories is not new toethnoscience, although the taxonomic signiliurnceofsuch categoriesha8 not been systematically explored.




D’Andrade (n.d.) in one of the first papers on Tzelt albotanical ethnogra hy searched for unnamed cate-gories in another fialect of Tzeltal. His intuitionswere stated as follows:

Are th en auh-gmupings in the taxonomic system at a lower

level of contrast han the lowest set of general terms, hut at ahigher level of contrast than the most specific terms? . .. s i t

really true th at no urther subdivisions are consistently made

since there are no [labels] for these subdivisions. . .. t would

Mem likely that these large groups of plants arc to some ex-

tent subdivided, or at least cross-indexed, tomake for a moreefficient mapping [D’Andrade n.d.:l].

D’Andrade’s conclusions were tentative, and recog-nized as such, but there were clear indications thatmidlevel categories could be isolated. These cate-gories appeared to be determined primarily i n termsof s et s of cert ain m orphological featu res of individualplant taxa.

Whiting (1939) presents some tentative evidence

for unnamed categories of plants in Hopi. French(1956) describes Wasco folk bo tany as lacking mid-level categories of plants but states that “implicitcategories” may be present. Bulmer and Tyler’s (inpress) work on frogs and Acheson’s (n.d.) materialson birds are recent examples dealing with ethnozoo-logical unlabeled taxa. Black (1968) argues forthe presence of an unlabeled taxon in her recentwork on Ojibwa. Goodenough (1956) explicitly iden-tifies unnamed categories of a paradigmatic natu re inhis treatment of Trukese kinship and later (1965)presents evidence for unlabeled classes with taxo-nomic significance for American English kinshipterms. After thi s paper had been drafted, Paul Ka y

brought to our attention a personal comm unicationfrom William Geoghegan that is analogous toKeesing’s (1966:23) remarks and identical to thepoint a t issue in this pa er. Geoghegan, taking issuewith a point de ve lop 2 in Ka y (1966:22), notes:“Why must every node in a taxonomy correspondto a lexeme? Analytically this m ay be so, due to theway in which analysis proceeds. But cognitively(my bias again) there is no reason to suppose ths,and i t probably isn’t true in fact.”

Finally, several recent papers hav e shown th at im-portant domains such as color (Conklin 1955) andcategories of eat ing (La nda r 1964; Berlin 1967) neednot be labeled linguistically by a single mono-lexemic head-term.

The discovery of semantic features, or “char-acters,” th at are utilized by nativ e speakers in mak-ing judgm ents of sim ilarity is one of t he m ajo r goalsof ethnoscientific research. W e do no t believe, how-ever that a prior knowledge of thes e fea ture s is aprerequisite to th e recognition of semantically re-lated sets of items. Informants, in the field and inquasi-experimental situations, continually volun-teered the fa ct that items “A , B , and C go together,”or “ are compamons.’) Consequently we feel th at asan operational procedure it is desirable a t th e outsetto request tha t informants make judgments in termsof overall similarity without specifying some set ofspecific features. Berlin (in press) and Berlin an d

Romn ey (1964) offer discussions of these roceduresin reference to other kind s of linguistic &a. Rom-ney and D’Andrade (1964) discuss this problem inreference to the applicab ility of the metho d of triads -testing discussed earlier. Sokal (1966) presents alucid account of problems dealing with over-allsimilarity in reference to biological classification ingeneral.

6 I t is assumed, of course, that the informant canread and write his native language with relativeease. Much of the most productive work in ethno-science de ends, in fact, on the use of literate in-formants b e Metzger and Williams 1963a, 1963b,1966; Berlin in press; Berlin, K ay , Metzger and

Williams n.d., and many other unpublished manu-scripts of the work in progress in Chiapas growingout of the Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford projectsin that area over the last ten years). Clearly, con-siderable effort on th e part of the eth nogr aph er is re-quired in develo ing a practical phonemic orthogra-phy, training inirmants to use it, and making cer-tain that many quasi-experimental tasks are under-stood. We feel the res ults far outweigh th e loss of re-search time. T he use of skilled informants ha s drawncriticism from cert ain are as of cult ural anthropology.There ar e those who look askance at th e reliance onhighly trained native assistants for fear that theirtraining somehow effects the validity of the results.

We are aware of th ese problems and do not takethem lightly. However, without such training an in-formant will be unable to ma ke available to the in-vestigator m any of his native intuitions a bou t his ownculture, intuitions that are perhaps forever outsidethe grasp of even th e most perceptive ethnographer.

A. Rimball Romney is currently developing acomputer program that will allow significantly largenumbers of items to be grouped into smaller con-ceptua l subsets. After the research reported here w ascompleted, we learned of a field procedure de-veloped by William Geoghegan that allows one toutilize the triads mentioned on very large numbersof items withou t t he aid of mechanical processing.

’ t so happens that the Tze ltal forms in this setcorrespond fairly closely to recognized botanicalspecies, with the obvious exception of Lagenariasiceraria, which is overdifferentiated. Suc h one-to-one correspondence is rath er rarely th e case (Berlin,Breedlove, and R aven 1966). Th e English and Lat inglosses for the Tzeltal names are approximationsonly and a pply specifically to the forms of theseexceedingly variable species most familiar t o Tzeltalspeakers.

I n Berlin, Breedlove, and R aven (1966) we re-ported that Lagmaria siceraria corresponded to theTzeltal taxa k’alk’ad bohE, sepsep boht, cu, andE’ahk’o7. This data represented a normalization forall inform ants consulted. T he illustrative d at a uti-

lized for th e present a er were derived from an in-forma nt who lacks suicL sse s of boht (the sh ape vari-etals k’alk’al bohE an d sepsep boht not being recog-nized) an d does not grou t’ahk’o? as a member ofthe set of conceptually r e i t e d gourds and squashes.We speculate t ha t i ts exclusion from the s et is due tothe f act t ha t the individuals of Lqma r i a sicerariathat are called t’ahk’o? are “genetic throwbacks”tha t ar e not easily recognizable as gourds.

* W e greatly a preciate the criticisms of H. C.Conklin, George &wgill, M arsh all Du rbin , WilliamGeoghegan, Richard W. Holm, Terrence Kaufm an,Paul Kay, A. Kimball Romney, David Schneider,and William Sturtevant. Kay has been especially

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