Plant names and folk taxonomies
Frameworks for ethnosemiotic inquiry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4474690 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Herman (0000-0002-0004-4682), Susan Mo, Susan Moss, Susan Arnold Moss |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 2007 |
| Issue | 167 |
| Pages | 1-11 |
| Publication date | 2007-01-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Semiotica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/sem.2007.069 |
| OpenAlex | W2139544002 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 4 |
Examining the rich naming systems associated with plants, this paper suggests how ethnobiological (specifically, ethnobotanical) inquiry can benefit from greater cooperation and synergy among fields concerned with naming practices, including onomastics, lexicography, cognitive anthropology, and cognitive linguistics. Our pilot-study focuses on the names of approximately one hundred heirloom vegetables culled from seed catalogues and other publications devoted to the preservation of seeds for varieties of vegetables passed down from generation to generation (e.g. Brown 1996; Bradshaw 2001; and Rakita 2003). We characterize these plant names as elements in a folk-taxonomic system, arguing that the study of such native nomencla-tural schemes can productively inform research on the mapping relationships among names or words, conceptual categories, and structures in the world. In turn, research in ethnosemiotics, defined broadly as the study of native understandings of sign-systems (Hoppál 1988; Voigt 1994), stands to gain from a more extensive integration of tools developed by theorists of verbal language and of the cognitive bases for cross-culturally attested naming patterns. Interdisciplinary work of this kind promises not only to advance ethnosemiotic research, but also to help separate out what is cognitively universal from what is culturally variable in semiotic and communicative processes in general
Cognition · Cognitive linguistics · Ethnobotany · Lexicography · Linguistics · Onomastics · Semiotics · Sign (mathematics) · Sign system · Sociology · Typology · Anthropology · Categorization, perception, and language · Ecology · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · linguistics and terminology studies · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.28 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2008 - 2025 (18) |
| Highly cited | No |