Cecil H Brown
Biographic Data
| ID | 3592388 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cecil H Brown |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cecil H |
| FAMILY NAME | Brown |
| SIGNATURE | BROWN C H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northern Illinois University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 67 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 581 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 67 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Lexical typology from an anthropological point of view
Leveraging Modularity During Replication of High-Fidelity Models
High-fidelity models are increasingly used to predict, and guide decision making. Prior work has emphasized the importance of replication in ensuring reliable modeling, and has yielded important replication strategies. However, this work is based on relatively simple theory generating models, and its lessons might not translate to high-fidelity models used for decision support. Using NetLogo we replicate a recently published high-fidelity model e…
Evaluating proposals of language genealogical relationship
In an endeavor to objectify and provide uniformity to the comparative method of historical linguistics, this study describes the Beck-Wichmann-Brown ( BWB ) system for evaluating lexical sets assembled as evidence for proposals of language genealogical relationship. The approach quantitatively assesses the degree of support that collections of comparative sets provide for proposals, with regard to whether or not observed lexical similarity exceed…
Paleobiolinguistics of New World Crops and the Otomanguean Language Family
Several studies recently published in Ethnobiology Letters treat respectively the paleobiolinguistics of chili pepper, manioc, maize, and the common bean in New World language families. This includes the Otomanguean family of Mexico, one of the oldest language groups of the hemisphere, whose parent language may have been spoken at the latest around 6500 years ago. This communication addresses the possibility that Otomanguean paleobiolinguistics s…
The Paleobiolinguistics of the Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L)
Paleobiolinguistics is used to determine when and where the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) developed significance for prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which common bean terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal information from plant genetics and archaeobotany. Paleobiolinguistic and other lines of evidence indicate that human interest in the common bean became significa…
The Paleobiolinguistics of Maize (Zea mays L)
Paleobiolinguistics is used to determine when and where maize (Zea mays) developed significance for different prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which maize terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal information from plant genetics and archaeobotany. Paleobiolinguistic and other lines of evidence indicate that human interest in maize was extensive millennia before the widespread…
Chitimacha
The comparative method of historical linguistics is carefully applied to the hypothesis that Chitimacha, a language of southern Louisiana now without fully fluent speakers, and languages of the Totozoquean family of Mesoamerica are genealogically related. Ninety-one lexical sets comparing Chitimacha words collected by Swadesh (1939; 1946a; 1950) to words reconstructed for Proto-Totozoquean (Brown et al. 2011) show regular sound correspondences. A…
Sound Correspondences in the World's Languages
Sound Correspondences in the World's Languages
An automated sound correspondence-recognition program developed by the authors is applied to a data set consisting of standardized word lists for over half of the world's languages. Online appendices present the results in a compendium of 692 recurrent sound correspondences that contains information about the frequency of occurrence of each correspondence. Applications of the compendium to historical linguistics are proposed. For example, the cat…
The Paleobiolinguistics of Domesticated Chili Pepper (Capsicum spp)
Paleobiolinguistics employs the comparative method of historical linguistics to reconstruct the biodiversity known to human groups of the remote, unrecorded past. Comparison of words for biological species from languages of the same language family facilitates reconstruction of the biological vocabulary of the family's ancient proto-language. This study uses paleobiolinguistics to establish where and when chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) developed s…
The Paleobiolinguistics of Domesticated Manioc (Manihot esculenta)
Paleobiolinguistics is used to identify on maps where and when manioc (Manihot esculenta) developed importance for different prehistoric groups of Native Americans. This information indicates, among other things, that significant interest in manioc developed at least a millennium before a village-farming way of life became widespread in the New World
The Role of Nahuatl in the Formation of Mesoamerica as a Linguistic Area
A number of attributes widely shared by languages of the culture region known as Mesoamerica have been identified by Campbell, Kaufman, and Smith-Stark (1986) as diagnostic of a linguistic area. Distributions of shared traits, including some features not previously recognized, suggest that Mesoamerica's development as a linguistic area at least in part involved diffusion of traits from Nahuatl, a regional lingua franca, to other Mesoamerican lang…
Totozoquean
This paper uses the comparative method of historical linguistics to investigate the hypothesis that languages of two well-established families of Mesoamerica, Totonacan and Mixe-Zoquean, are related in a larger genetic grouping dubbed Totozoquean. Proposed cognate sets comparing words reconstructed for Proto-Totonacan (PTn) and Proto-Mixe-Zoquean (PMZ) show regular sound correspondences attesting to the descent of these two languages from Proto-T…
Automated Dating of the World's Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity
This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from glottochronology in four major respects: (1) it is automated and thus is more objective, (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single database of worldwide languages, (3) it is base…
Adding typology to lexicostatistics
The ASJP project aims at establishing relationships between languages on the basis of the Swadesh word list. For this purpose, lists have been collected and phonologically transcribed for almost 3,500 languages. Using a method based on the algorithm proposed by Levenshtein (Cybernetics and Control Theory 10: 707-710, 1966), a custom-made computer program calculates the distances between all pairs of languages in the database. Standard software is…
Prehistoric Chronology of the Common Bean in the New World
Glottochronology and the comparative method of historical linguistics provide a linguistic approach for dating the common bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.) that both complements and supplements archaeological dating techniques such as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). For example, the comparative approach reveals that prehistoric languages of eastern North America having glottochronological dates earlier than 700 B.P., such as Proto-Iroquoian (2700 …
Proto-Mayan Syllable Nuclei
Although many aspects of the historical phonology of Mayan languages have been worked out, development of the syllable nuclei of words has received insufficient attention. A tabulation of correspondence sets with subsequent identifications of conditioned reflexes reveals the necessity for reconstructing at least ten different Proto‐Mayan syllable nuclei (including a sequence of a vowel followed by a velar fricative whose reflexes often pattern as…
Stagolee Shot Billy
Although his story has been told countless times - by performers from Ma Rainey, Cab Calloway and the Isley brothers to Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown and Taj Mahal - no one seems to know who Stagolee really is. Lee? Stagger Lee? He has gone by all these names in the ballad that has kept his exploits before us for over a century. Delving into a subculture of St. Louis known as Deep Morgan, Cecil Brown emerges with the facts behind the legend to…
Folkbiology
Folkbiology. Douglas L. Medin and Scott Atran. eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 504 pp
Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages
Brown examines the nature of acculturation - the process of the incorporation of foreign words about new concepts into a language - in the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans. Specifically, he examines how Native American languages adjusted to the introduction of foreign objects and concepts after 1492. He looks systematically at almost 200 Native American languages and the words they developed for 77 new items and concepts, discerni…
What Is Houma
Spanish Loanwords in Languages of the Southeastern United States
Lexical acculturation, areal diffusion, lingua francas, and bilingualism
This study continues an investigation of lexical acculturation in Native American languages using a sample of 292 language cases distributed from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego (Brown 1994). Focus is on the areal diffusion of native language words for imported European Objects and concepts. Approximately 80% of all sharing of such terms is found to occur among closely genetically related languages. Amerindian languages only distantly relat…
Lexical Acculturation and Ethnobiology
Are folk-biological classification and naming informed by utilitarianist considerations (usefulness of plants and animals to people) or by intellectualist concerns (interest in species simply because they are there)? This question is investigated by examining the semantic content of native labels from Amerindian languages for living things introduced by Europeans to the New World. Such terms can be "utilitarian" in nature, for example, Cherokee "…
Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages [and Comments and Reply]
Folk Botanical Life-Forms
Folk botanical life-form terms are added to languages in a highly regular manner. The first life-form to be lexically encoded is always "tree"and the second, a small herbaceous plant class (GRERB). The addition of "bush," "vine," and "grass" follows with "vine" always preceding "grass." An explanation of this encoding sequence is proposed which refers to certain general principles of naming-behavior recently outlined by Witkowski and Brown (1977)…
Folk Zoological Life-Forms
Folk zoological life-form terms, like folk botanical life-form terms (Brown 1977a), are added to languages in a highly regular manner. Life-forms of the triad FISH, BIRD, and SNAKE are lexically encoded first, although in no particular order, followed by WUG (e.g., American English hug) and then MAMMAL. Four general principles of naming-behavior underlie these regularities: (1) criteria clustering; (2) conjunctivity (including binary opposition);…
Mode of Subsistence and Folk Biological Taxonomy [and Comments and Reply]
There are significant differences between the folk biological taxonomy and nomenclature of hunter-gatherers and that of small-scale agriculturalists. While foragers possess sizable inventories of labeled plant and animal classes, small-scale farmers tend to have inventories that are considerably larger. Also, binomial names, such as English blue oak and shingle oak, are common in folk taxonomies of cultivators but rare in those of hunter-gatherer…
General Principles of Human Anatomical Partonomy and Speculations on the Growth of Partonomic Nomenclature1
This paper describes twelve general principles of classification and nomenclature in human anatomical partonomy (body parts systematics). These principles are derived through comparison of "naming-behavior" data from forty-one globally distributed languages. In addition, four growth stages in the development of nomenclature for parts of the human extremities are proposed
Automated Dating of the World's Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity
This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from glottochronology in four major respects: (1) it is automated and thus is more objective, (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single database of worldwide languages, (3) it is base…
An Explanation of Color Nomenclature Universale
Specific physiological perception mechanisms account for some of the regularities associated with the lexical encoding of basic color terms described by Berlin and Kay (1969). This paper, however, focuses upon those regularities explained through reference to certain general principles of naming-behavior which are also pertinent to domains other than color. [cognitive anthropology, folk classification, language change, language universale, naming…
Where Do Tree Terms Come From
Terms for 'tree' and other general biological categories such as 'grass', 'vine', 'fish' and 'bird' are relatively recent additions to languages. These broad categories have probably developed in response to most individuals being removed from daily intimate contact with the world of plant and animals as societies have increased in size and complexity. We suggest that languages of thousands of years ago either lacked 'tree' or encoded it only as …
The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature [and Comments and Reply]
This paper evaluates Brent Berlin's general principles of folk biological classification and nomenclature in view of evidence from hunter-gatherer groups which has accumulated over the past decade. In particular it focuses on his proposals concerning the growth and development of ethnobiological nomenclature. One proposal is that generic/type-specific polysemy (e.g., use of a single word to denote both oak tree in general and a single species of …
Figurative language In a universalist perspective
This paper assembles cross-language evidence documenting several high frequency, figurative labels for body parts: e.g., "child of the eye," for pupil of the eye; "mother of the hand," for thumb; "mouse of the arm," for biceps. These figurative expressions occur in languages at frequencies that greatly exceed chance. In addition, their distribution is discontinuous across genetic and geographic language boundaries, indicating frequent independent…
Aspects of the Phonological History of Mayan-Zoquean
Growth and development of folk botanical life forms in the Mayan language family
This paper examines the growth of folk botanical life-form categories I for example, "tree," "vine") in the Mayan language family of Mesoamerica. Reconstruction of life-form systems for protostages in Mayan language history indicates that the addition of life-form terms to Mayan vocabularies has conformed to an earlier proposal of a botanical life-form encoding sequence (Brown 1977a). In addition, the vast majority of Mayan botanical life forms h…
Lexical Universals
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Some General Principles of Biological and Non-Biological Folk Classification1
Principles of taxonomy and nomenclature in folk biology first outlined by Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven (1973) are shown to extend to non-biological and non-taxonomic folk classification. Four non-biological taxonomies, American English "automobile" and "tool" taxonomies, a Finnish "winter vehicle" taxonomy, and a Thai "spiritghosts" taxonomy, are presented which clearly manifest so-called "biological" principles. In addition, a Huastec (male) "bo…
Proto-Mayan Syllable Nuclei
Although many aspects of the historical phonology of Mayan languages have been worked out, development of the syllable nuclei of words has received insufficient attention. A tabulation of correspondence sets with subsequent identifications of conditioned reflexes reveals the necessity for reconstructing at least ten different Proto‐Mayan syllable nuclei (including a sequence of a vowel followed by a velar fricative whose reflexes often pattern as…
Mesoamerican
Hieroglyphic Literacy in Ancient Mayaland
Lexical Encoding Sequences and Language Change
Lexical reconstructions of Proto-Polynesian (Branstetter 1977), Proto-Miwok (Callaghan 1979), and Proto-Mayan (Fox 1977; Kaufman 1964, 1969) basic color term vocabularies are presented and compared. Although these reconstructed systems accord with the well-known Berlin and Kay (1969) color encoding sequence, they all contain a subtle distortion They generally are as large as color term systems found in contemporary daughter languages. Considering…
Unique Beginners and Covert Categories in Folk Biological Taxonomies
Adding typology to lexicostatistics
The ASJP project aims at establishing relationships between languages on the basis of the Swadesh word list. For this purpose, lists have been collected and phonologically transcribed for almost 3,500 languages. Using a method based on the algorithm proposed by Levenshtein (Cybernetics and Control Theory 10: 707-710, 1966), a custom-made computer program calculates the distances between all pairs of languages in the database. Standard software is…
Prehistoric Chronology of the Common Bean in the New World
Glottochronology and the comparative method of historical linguistics provide a linguistic approach for dating the common bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.) that both complements and supplements archaeological dating techniques such as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). For example, the comparative approach reveals that prehistoric languages of eastern North America having glottochronological dates earlier than 700 B.P., such as Proto-Iroquoian (2700 …
Psychological, semantic, and structural aspects of American English kinship terms1
Three componential analyses of American kin terms-Wallace and Atkins' (1960), Romney and D'Andrade's (1964), and Goodenough's (1965)-are a principal focus of an investigation of American kinship semantics and of an enquiry into the epistemological foundation of semantic analysis in general. The psychological, semantic, and structural implications of these analyses are explored in terms of the distinction between necessary and contingent facts. Th…
The Paleobiolinguistics of Domesticated Chili Pepper (Capsicum spp)
Paleobiolinguistics employs the comparative method of historical linguistics to reconstruct the biodiversity known to human groups of the remote, unrecorded past. Comparison of words for biological species from languages of the same language family facilitates reconstruction of the biological vocabulary of the family's ancient proto-language. This study uses paleobiolinguistics to establish where and when chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) developed s…
Lexical Acculturation and Ethnobiology
Are folk-biological classification and naming informed by utilitarianist considerations (usefulness of plants and animals to people) or by intellectualist concerns (interest in species simply because they are there)? This question is investigated by examining the semantic content of native labels from Amerindian languages for living things introduced by Europeans to the New World. Such terms can be "utilitarian" in nature, for example, Cherokee "…
The Paleobiolinguistics of Maize (Zea mays L)
Paleobiolinguistics is used to determine when and where maize (Zea mays) developed significance for different prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which maize terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal information from plant genetics and archaeobotany. Paleobiolinguistic and other lines of evidence indicate that human interest in maize was extensive millennia before the widespread…
The Paleobiolinguistics of Domesticated Manioc (Manihot esculenta)
Paleobiolinguistics is used to identify on maps where and when manioc (Manihot esculenta) developed importance for different prehistoric groups of Native Americans. This information indicates, among other things, that significant interest in manioc developed at least a millennium before a village-farming way of life became widespread in the New World
The “Logical Sloppiness” of Language
Unique Beginners and Covert Categories in Folk Biological Taxonomies
Psychological, semantic, and structural aspects of American English kinship terms1
Three componential analyses of American kin terms-Wallace and Atkins' (1960), Romney and D'Andrade's (1964), and Goodenough's (1965)-are a principal focus of an investigation of American kinship semantics and of an enquiry into the epistemological foundation of semantic analysis in general. The psychological, semantic, and structural implications of these analyses are explored in terms of the distinction between necessary and contingent facts. Th…
Semantic Components, Meaning, and Use in Ethnosemantics
The epistemological status of semantic components of ethnosemantics is investigated with reference to Wittgenstein's definition of the meaning of a word as its use in language. Semantic components, like the intension of words in logistic philosophy, constitute the conditions which must pertain to objects in order that they are denoted by particular words. “Componential meaning” is determined to be another form of “unitary meaning” and hence subje…
General Principles of Human Anatomical Partonomy and Speculations on the Growth of Partonomic Nomenclature1
This paper describes twelve general principles of classification and nomenclature in human anatomical partonomy (body parts systematics). These principles are derived through comparison of "naming-behavior" data from forty-one globally distributed languages. In addition, four growth stages in the development of nomenclature for parts of the human extremities are proposed
Some General Principles of Biological and Non-Biological Folk Classification1
Principles of taxonomy and nomenclature in folk biology first outlined by Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven (1973) are shown to extend to non-biological and non-taxonomic folk classification. Four non-biological taxonomies, American English "automobile" and "tool" taxonomies, a Finnish "winter vehicle" taxonomy, and a Thai "spiritghosts" taxonomy, are presented which clearly manifest so-called "biological" principles. In addition, a Huastec (male) "bo…
Descent and alliance in an endogamous society
Folk Botanical Life-Forms
Folk botanical life-form terms are added to languages in a highly regular manner. The first life-form to be lexically encoded is always "tree"and the second, a small herbaceous plant class (GRERB). The addition of "bush," "vine," and "grass" follows with "vine" always preceding "grass." An explanation of this encoding sequence is proposed which refers to certain general principles of naming-behavior recently outlined by Witkowski and Brown (1977)…
An Explanation of Color Nomenclature Universale
Specific physiological perception mechanisms account for some of the regularities associated with the lexical encoding of basic color terms described by Berlin and Kay (1969). This paper, however, focuses upon those regularities explained through reference to certain general principles of naming-behavior which are also pertinent to domains other than color. [cognitive anthropology, folk classification, language change, language universale, naming…
Ruth M. Kempson, Semantic Theory. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.) Cambridge
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Mesoamerican
Lexical Universals
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Variability, cognitive reality, and principles of classification and nomenclature
Aspects of the Phonological History of Mayan-Zoquean
Growth and development of folk botanical life forms in the Mayan language family
This paper examines the growth of folk botanical life-form categories I for example, "tree," "vine") in the Mayan language family of Mesoamerica. Reconstruction of life-form systems for protostages in Mayan language history indicates that the addition of life-form terms to Mayan vocabularies has conformed to an earlier proposal of a botanical life-form encoding sequence (Brown 1977a). In addition, the vast majority of Mayan botanical life forms h…
Folk Zoological Life-Forms
Folk zoological life-form terms, like folk botanical life-form terms (Brown 1977a), are added to languages in a highly regular manner. Life-forms of the triad FISH, BIRD, and SNAKE are lexically encoded first, although in no particular order, followed by WUG (e.g., American English hug) and then MAMMAL. Four general principles of naming-behavior underlie these regularities: (1) criteria clustering; (2) conjunctivity (including binary opposition);…
Nonbiological Classification Reconsidered
Animal Classification in Juchitan Zapotec
Folk zoological life-form classes of Juchitan Zapotec are described and related to the cross-language framework outlined by Brown (1979a). Juchitan Zapotec has only "fish" and "snake" of the five animal life forms lexically encoded by languages in a regular sequence (Brown 1979a). It lacks "bird," "wug" (e.g., American English bug), and "mammal." "Wug" and "mammal," however, exist in "emerging" or "incipient" forms in the language. Creatures are …
Where Do Tree Terms Come From
Terms for 'tree' and other general biological categories such as 'grass', 'vine', 'fish' and 'bird' are relatively recent additions to languages. These broad categories have probably developed in response to most individuals being removed from daily intimate contact with the world of plant and animals as societies have increased in size and complexity. We suggest that languages of thousands of years ago either lacked 'tree' or encoded it only as …
Figurative language In a universalist perspective
This paper assembles cross-language evidence documenting several high frequency, figurative labels for body parts: e.g., "child of the eye," for pupil of the eye; "mother of the hand," for thumb; "mouse of the arm," for biceps. These figurative expressions occur in languages at frequencies that greatly exceed chance. In addition, their distribution is discontinuous across genetic and geographic language boundaries, indicating frequent independent…
Mesoamerican Historical Linguistics and Distant Genetic Relationship
More on Folk Zoological Life-Forms
Lexical Encoding Sequences and Language Change
Lexical reconstructions of Proto-Polynesian (Branstetter 1977), Proto-Miwok (Callaghan 1979), and Proto-Mayan (Fox 1977; Kaufman 1964, 1969) basic color term vocabularies are presented and compared. Although these reconstructed systems accord with the well-known Berlin and Kay (1969) color encoding sequence, they all contain a subtle distortion They generally are as large as color term systems found in contemporary daughter languages. Considering…
Whorf and Universals of Color Nomenclature
Inherent physical-perceptual distinctiveness plays a large role in color salience. In addition, words for color referents vary in lexical salience in a way that is concordant with the physical-perceptual distinctiveness of these referents. Highly distinctive referents typically receive salient labels, while less distinctive referents receive nonsalient ones. Hence the lexical salience of color words reflects underlying physical-perceptual salienc…
Polysemy, Lexical Change and Cultural Importance
Linguistics (35 works) · Philosophy (35 works) · History (33 works) · Computer Science (28 works) · Sociology (26 works) · History (25 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (24 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Biology (22 works) · Anthropology (15 works)