Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies

Author(s): Brent Berlin, Dennis E. Breedlove and Peter H. Raven

Source: American Anthropologist , Apr., 1968, New Series, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Apr., 1968),
pp. 290-299
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/671117

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

American Anthropological Association and Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies
BRENT BERLIN
DENNIS E. BREEDLOVE
University of California, Berkeley
PETER H. RAVEN
Stanford University

Much of the recent work in ethnoscience has been concerned with the nature of folk taxonom
stated definition of which requires that all folk taxa be monolexemically labeled. This paper
dence that unlabeled categories may also be of crucial taxonomic significance, and we feel
appropriate to treat such categories apart from the named taxonomic entities of the syste
portantly, evidence presented indicates that by recognizing unnamed taxa one may gain an u
ing of the structure of a particular semantic domain that is actually obscured if one focu
lexically labeled units.

able, however, whether "ample evidence" is

M UCH of the
science productive
today workcollabora-
derives from in ethno-
actually available to support his position. The
tive research in certain areas of ethnobiology
purpose of the present paper is in part to cor-
(see Colby 1966, Sturtevant 1964 forrect this deficiency.
a survey
of these materials). It is often found that the
TZELTAL PLANT TAXONOMY
semantic structures uncovered by such re-
search are hierarchic in their formal char- In our research in Tzeltal botanical eth
acteristics. Thus they resemble the classifica-
raphy,' we have found it possible to de
tory structures conventionally employedmine in with a high degree of reliability the
the biological sciences and have generally
outlines of the named taxonomic structure of
been termed (folk) taxonomies (Conklin 1962a, the plant world for Tzeltal speakers (Berlin,
1962b, 1964; Durbin 1966; Frake 1961, 1962; Breedlove and Raven in preparation). In the
Gregg 1954; Kay 1966; Lounsbury 1964; course of this work, we have discovered many
Romney n.d.). meaningful and culturally revealing categories
Most writers agree on a definition of a folk related by inclusion that are not convention-
taxonomy similar to the following: "A system ally, monolexemically labeled. In fact, many of
of monolexemically labelled folk segregates re- these categories receive no habitual linguistic
lated by hierarchic inclusion.. ." (Conklin designations of any sort. We feel that it is in-
1962a:128). But must the segregates, or cate- appropriate to treat such categories separately
gories, included in such taxonomies necessarily from the named taxonomic entities of the sys-
be monolexemically labeled? Or is Keesing cor- tem. More importantly, we shall present evi-
rect in asserting "If we insist that the descrip- dence that by recognizing unnamed taxa,
tive units of an ethnography be lexically la- one may gain an understanding of the struc-
belled, we are likely to arrive at a very limited ture of a particular semantic domain that is
sort of description: an ethnography of how actually obscured if one focuses solely on
people talk about what they do, not what they lexically labeled units.
do or expect each other to do . . . There is At the highest level of the Tzeltal plant
ample evidence that expectations and distinc- taxonomy, there is no monolexemic taxon, or
tions need not be directly mapped in language" "unique beginner," in which all other Tzeltal
(1966:23)? plant taxa are included. Nevertheless, it has
In questioning the utility of restricting been possible to establish, by the procedures
ethnographic description to labeled categories, outlined below, that animals and plants are
Keesing has pointed the way toward a reex- distinguished as two separate unnamed classes
amination of one of the most fundamental by Tzeltal speakers.2 In the absence of any
assumptions of ethnoscience. It is question- "unique beginner," the highest level in Tzeltal
plant taxonomy is represented by four major
Accepted for publication March 13, 1967. plant-class lexemes in which some eighty per-
290

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 [BERLIN, BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies 291

te? (tree) ak (grass) ?ak' (vine) wamal (h

Y Y2. Y28

X1X2 . X138X189X140X141X142 ? X193

i(i For
= 1,i <138,
2,. ? ?xi ,is194) indicatespreceded
immediately a specific taxon
by te?. For dominated byiste?.
139 <i< 194, xi not immediately preceded by te?.
yi(i= 1, 2,. - , 28) indicates a non-specific taxon immediately preceded by te?.

zi(i= 1, 2, ? , r) indicates a taxon in direct contrast withte?.

FIGURE 1. Schematic representation of the Tzeltal plant taxon te? (trees) and its included members
indicating the paucity of midlevel named taxa.

cent of all Tzeltal plant names are included. In and likinib do not in themselves indicate their
addition to and coordinate with these major inclusion in hihte?, although these plants are
plant classes are a series of taxa that are for the consistently considered as kinds of hihte? by
most part botanically unusual when judged Tzeltal speakers.
by the morphological criteria that define The remaining three major classes, wamal,
the four major classes: te? (trees), ?ak' (vines), ?ak, and ?ak' show a similar paucity of non-
?ak (grasses), and wamal (herbs). These minor specific taxa.
classes are considered to be separate, un-
affiliated groups, and include, for example, te (trees)
certain epiphytes, cacti, agaves, and bamboos.
Within these coordinate major and minor hikte' (oak)
plant classes are grouped all of the Tzeltal
specific taxa, i.e., those taxa which include no
other members. There are, however, very few
-o .S
midlevel plant categories in the taxonomy that
are lexemically labeled. We have selected the
,: ,
major plant class te?, as described by one of IAtleak
;r C4MOD
our 50 informants, to illustrate this general
lack of midrange named taxa.
It will be noted in Figure 1 that the taxon
te? immediately includes no less than 166 mem-

bers (xI, 2, ' , X138; Y1, y, y* * * )28). Ex-

actly 138 of the taxa in this contrast set, or 83 Botanical ranges of each sp
libinib: Quercus acatenang
percent, are specific taxa. The remaining 28
& Bonpl, & Quercus sapo
terms of the contrast set are nonspecific, each sakyok: Quercus candican
immediately including from two to seven spe- Bonpl. in part.
cific taxa. At no point does one find subhierar- k'ewe? hihte?: Quercus seg
chies that exceed more than two levels in Schlecht. & Cham.

capat ihhte?: Quercus peduncularis Ned, Quercus rugosa Nee,

depth. The total number of specific taxa in
& Quercus crassifolia Humb. & Bonpl. in part.
this class, for this informant, is 194. 1'i9 hihte?: Quercus corrugata Hook.
An example of a midlevel, nonspecific taxon
is hihte? (oak), as seen in Figure 2. Figure 2. An example of the named midlevel taxon
The linguistic structure of the names sakyokhihte? (oak) and its included members.

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
292 American Anthropologist [70, 1968
teg

x1 x2 x3 Yi x4 xs y2 XG x7 x

?ac'amte? ?ahatetes ?ahoh ?alaS ?altala

X139 X140 ' " X144 X146 X146 X147

FIGuRE 3. Portion of the contrast set immediately included in th

ordering of the coordinate taxa is arbitrarily alphabetic

COVERT MIDLEVEL CATEGORIES would then have a high information con

with considerable psychological relevan
It is possible, of course, to accept the struc-
They would proceed directly from the spe
ture in Figure 1 as displaying all of the cul-
purpose, highly specific taxonomy of ou
turally obligatory inclusion relationships
formants. (Our use of "general purpose
among the relevant taxa of the class te? and to
"special purpose" taxonomy is outlined m
proceed to other problems. Such a decision
fully in Berlin, Breedlove and Raven, 1
would depend, in part, on one's definition of a
275.)
taxonomy. Thus Conklin, in his classic study
TESTING
of Hanun6o ethnobotany (1954), describes THE HYPOTHESIS

a similarly shallow plant taxonomy, In butgeneral,

goes we set out to determine t
on to note that other "midgroupingsistence
of plants of culturally significant subgro
are made, of course, but not according to a
by employing several field procedure
structured terminologically-identifiable sys-
first consisted of simple ethnographic o
tem" (1954:97). tions and recordings of informants' com
If such actual or potential midgroupings
on plants of in natural contexts. During t
plant taxa are ignored, however, it becomes
cess of botanical collecting of some 1
difficult if not impossible to develop specimens
a rationale with native informants, mu
for horizontally ordering the individual
denceplant was accumulated that suggested
taxa within each of the many-membered some con- plants in the same named contr
trast sets. Let us return our focus towere
a portion
more closely related, cognitively
of the contrast set immediately included
others. Thesein data included discussions of
te? to clarify this point. If one relies solely on
ethnobotanical features of certain groups of
the relationships revealed by the taxonomic
plants, visual demonstrations of similar plants
classification of the named taxa, theimportance
horizontalas food, herbs, firewood, and so on
ordering of the immediately included Such items is
observations, while sporadic and anec-
necessarily arbitrary. The order could dotal pre-
in character, were important checks on
sumably be alphabetical, as seen inthe Figure
results 3. of the methods of grouping dis-
The items might also be arranged in terms
cussed of
below. Thus, the many hours of in-
their relationships as displayed by the general-
formal discussion with informants in the field
purpose Linnaean system of classification.
were extremely helpful in providing insights
Such an arrangement would clearly into notwhat
be the
might or might not prove to be a po-
most ethnographically relevant one possible.
tential ethnobotanical semantic dimension.4
A second
One alternative to the arbitrary ordering of method we have found useful in
coordinate taxa derives from the intuition,
searching for possible subgroupings within
mentioned above, that unlabeled, midlevel
contrast sets of large numbers was to deter-
categories exist for our informants. mineIf the
such
extent to which informants sub-
categories can be shown to exist, one might
divided lists of plant names. Instruction con-
expect that smaller subsets of terms within
cerning the atask of grouping was accom-
named contrast set would be conceptually
plished as follows. Several names of plants
grouped together. These unnamed and subsets
animals, written on separate slips of paper,

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
BERLIN, BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies 293
were presented to an informant. He The
tures. was then
first was the so-called triads-test,
instructed to read the names on used
each by slip
Romneyandand D'Andrade (1964) in
to put into separate groups those
their that were
analysis of American kinship data and
"most like one other." The Tzeltal
first interroga-
employed ethnographically by D'Andrade
tion was as follows: (n.d.) in his early Tzeltal ethnobotanical work.
bitik sbil ya shun sba sok The procedure requires informants to specify
(Which names group with one another?) which item in a set of three is "most different"
from the others. The results, when run for all
Informants had no problem in grouping these logical triads in a set of terms, provide some in-
names correctly, animal names being placed dication of the total cognitive similarity of
in one set, plant names in another. These data,each term to all others in the set. This proce-
along with observation in natural contexts, in-dure is clearly restricted to sets of relatively
dicated the existence of an unnamed group, small size because of the larger and larger
"plants," as mentioned above. numbers of triads that an informant must ex-
Following the grouping of plants and ani- amine as the number of items in the set in-
mals, a set of plant names was presented to creases.6
each informant, some of the names belonging A second procedure in the discovery of
to one major Tzeltal class, some to another, characteristics of ethnobotanical relevance is
e.g., names for two kinds of trees as opposed the
to construction of folk keys by informants.
the name for a particular kind of herb. In- Keys are routinely employed for biological pur-
poses and consist of a series of successive bin-
structions were the same as those given for the
grouping of animal and plant names. As ex- ary divisions of a set of organisms, the charac-
pected, informants had no difficulty in group- teristics used for each division being specified,
ing names that belonged to the same major until each organism in the set has been distin-
Tzeltal plant class. guished from all others. In our field procedure,
Once it became clear that the task was un- an informant was presented with a set of plant
derstood, the names of the immediately in- names that he had earlier isolated as being
cluded taxa of each major class name, written cognitively similar to one another. He was
on slips of paper, were presented to informantsthen asked to construct a key for this set of
with instructions to read through the lists andorganisms, accounting for all the included
place in separate piles those names which ap- forms. By this means, the informant was re-
plied to plants that were judged to be similar quired to verbalize all of the conceptual dis-
to one another. We found that such subgroup- tinctions he has utilized in making the divi-
ings of closely semantically related items sions. Such keys provide useful data when
within the same contrast set is easily accom- compared with the results obtained by other
plished by trained informants. We have also tests.
found the resulting sets to be highly reliable.Our third procedure consists of paired com-
The ability of native informants to perform parisons of all lexical items in a particular de-
such grouping tasks, in conjunction with the limited set of plant names. In completing this
reliability of the resulting groups, is a good task the informant was requested to compare
indication of the psychological saliency of theall logical pairs in any set in terms of all the
classification.5 similarities and differences that he felt were
Our inquiry did not stop at merely requiringrelevant for any pair. Such characteristics as
informants to subgroup items within the same the manner of stem growth, size and shape of
contrast set of named specifics. We also found the stem and leaves, internode length, and
it possible to determine many of the concep- fruit size and shape have been utilized in these
tual features that were shared among plants discriminations. Responses obtained by this
within each set, as well as to determine certain
method can later be converted into a standard
features that distinguished items within a set.notation for distinctive features that allows
The procedures outlined below also indicated the investigator to scan "componential defini-
that some of the first sets isolated by infor- tions" of a set of terms, and, as a consequence,
mants included yet other important, unlabeled bring together those terms that are most simi-
conceptual groupings. lar in terms of those features judged important
Having demonstrated the existence of such by the informant.
subgroupings, we used three main procedures All of these simple techniques can be em-
to investigate their defining conceptual fea- ployed by any intelligent, semiliterate infor-

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 294 American Anthropologist [70, 1968
mant. To illustrate their use, TABLE
we have2.selected
NUMBER OF TIMES A
one informant's subgrouping JUDGED
of a set of "MOST
plant SIMILAR" IN AN
names for "vines" (?ak'). ThisOF FIVE CONCEPTUALLY RELA
classification
was similar to that constructed by other in-
formants presented with the samebohr cu mayil c'ol c'um
situation
and is selected for illustrative purposes only.
bohr
This particular set of plants names was 3iso-0 0 0
lated by the sorting procedure described earlier
and consisted of the followingcu 0
Tzeltal terms':0 0
bohE (large gourd) Lagenaria siceraria
(Mol.)Standl. mayil 2
cu (bottle gourd) Lagenaria siceraria
(Mol.)Standl. c'ol 3
c'ol (squash) Cucurbita pepo L.
C'um (pumpkin) Cucurbita moschata c'um
Duch.
mayil (perennial squash) Cucurbitaficifolia
Bouchi readily
key is i
There are ten possible triads for this setthat
of derived from the triads data.
forms. One informant, when presented with all The results of our third procedure, that of
logical triads, made the responses shown paired
in comparisons for all items in the set, are
Table 1. The number of times any two lexemes shown in Table 4. Not all dimensions are
in the set were classed together (i.e., judged
equally relevant for all terms in the set. Thus
most similar in any triad) is given in Table 2.
dimension G, color of the meat of the fruit, is
Table 2 indicates that bohr and mayil were not relevant, and hence omitted, for the
never classed together in any triad. On the gourds boht and cu. Fruit size (dimension F) is
other hand, mayil was classed twice with relevant
c'ol for boht and cu, but these gourds
and twice with E'um; i.e., it was judged torange
be over both of the values for the dimen-
equally similar to both. The pairs bohr-cu and
sion (large and small). Consequently, the
c'ol-E'um were judged to be closest in three letter for the dimension of size appears with-
triads.
out subscripts for bohr and cu.
The divisions made in a folk key con- We noted earlier that the number of shared
structed for the same set of plant names features
are between two items in a set provides an
shown graphically in Figure 4. The conceptual index of their overall similarity as judged by
dimensions with their appropriate values ver- the informant. The number of shared features
balized for this key are indicated in Table 3.for every pair of items in the set is shown in a
Small letters with subscripts indicate values
for a particular dimension. It can be seen TABLE 3. CONCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS UTILIZED IN
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TZELTAL FOLK
TABLE 1. ALL POSSIBLE TRIADS IN SET OF KEY GIVEN IN FIGURE 4
FIVE SEMANTICALLY RELATED
TZELTAL PLANT NAMES (A) "Kind of vine" [uniting feature for the total
set]: Herbaceous creepers with large leaves
and similar fruits and flowers.
1) bohr cu c'ol
2) bohr cu c'um
(B) vine texture: b, hairy
3) bohv cu mayil b2 spiny
4) bohr c'ol 'um
5) bohr c'ol mayil
6) bohI c'um mayil (C) fruit shape: cl disk-shaped
C2 elongated
7) cu c'ol ' um
8) cu c'ol mayil (D) vine-leaf color: d, blackish [relatively dark]
9) cu c'um mayil d2 whitish [relatively white]
10) c'ol 'um mayil
(E) flesh color of fruit: el white
e2 yellow
Underlined terms were judged "most different" in each triad.

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
BERLIN, BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies 295
A

boh", cu, mayil, c'ol, E'um

(b) (b2)
bohl, cu mayil, c'ol, t'um

(d2)
c'ol0, 1'um

(ct) (C2) (d) (ei) (e,2)

bohl cu mayil c'ol 0'um
(large gourd) (bottle gourd)
FIGURE 4. Tzeltal folk key constructed

matrix 5 in for
equally Table comparison
similar to C'um and c'ol, sharing three wi
findings by out
theof seventriad
made features with and
V'um and four
key out met
evaluation. As might be with
of seven features expected, thes
c'ol. Finally, as our other
data would suggest,
sets of data correspond l'um and c'ol share
closely. Thus five out bo
of seven they
cu are similar in that features, showing
share them to be con- ou
five
possible features, but
ceptually verybohi
similar. shares on
feature with mayil, 'um,
From the botanical pointand c'ol,
of view, the Tzel- a
shares only two with tal treatmentmayil and
given this set is none
quite under-
than the uniting value standable. First,
of the subset set)
the of five Tzeltal
with
c'ol. The squash mayil is approximately names, although not included in a named

TABLE 4. FOLK FEATURE DEFINITIONS OF TZELTAL PLANT NAMES OF FIVE CONCEPTUALLY RELATED
"VINES" AS COMPILED FROM PAIRED COMPARISONS

Dimensions Values

(A) stem texture a, hairy; a2 spiney

(B) leaf texture b, hairy; b2 spiney
(C) flower color c, white; C2 yellow
(D) fruit shape d, disk-like; d2 elongated
(E) leaf color eL relatively light; e2 relatively dark
(F) fruit size f, large;f2 small
(G) color of meat of fruit gI yellow; g2 white

Definitions of plant names

bohr alblcidlelf
cu albicld2ef
mayil a2b2C2d2elf2g2
C'um a2b2C2dle2 fg2
c'ol a2b2c2dlef 2g

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
296 American Anthropologist [70, 1968
TABLE 5. MATRIX INDICATING NUMBER
the OF SHARED sub
FEATURES FOR ALL LOGICAL PAIRS OF PLANT
belongs
NAMES DEFINED IN TABLE 4
It is in
nomic s
bohl cu mayil I'um c'ol stricts
when o
bohr* 51(6) 1(6) 1(6) 1(6) named
amount
cu 2(6) 0 (6) 0 (6)
played i
mayil 3 (7) 4 (7) that in

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

E'unm 5 (7)
To summarize, we have presented empirical
evidence that unlabeled taxa do exist for Tzel-
tal speakers. The nodes of the hierarchy gener-
Figures in parentheses indicate potential nu
ated by our eliciting procedures are not arbi-
on which two plants might be compared.
trarily spaced and not permutable in their
vertical or sequential ordering; therefore they
Tzeltal taxon, clearly does imply a form
taxonomic structure.a mo This
coherent group. structure
Of is notall
an arbitrary key generated in
members
Cucurbitaceae terms of culturally irrelevant oppositions
familiar to Tz of
these five are our the own invention
only (cf. Conklin
membe 1962a:135-
Cucurbiteae (Jeffrey136; 1962b:90-91; 1964:39-41).
1962). Much addi- Th
flowers than any tional evidence
other that we have member
accumulated
known to these supportspeople,
the existence of these unnamed
and taxa are
having large fruits and clearly points to their cultural validity,
with tough
this group, the both in first
the particular example discussed in de-
obligator
tail and in many analogous instances.
responds to a recognition of (Thethe
ences betweentaxon the te?, for example,
group now is believed
compto im-
mediately include no less than
cu and that including thirty un-
mayil, '
The gourds bohM named taxa.) and cu both
species Lagenaria siceraria, a
fruits are very different and pr
for their being given distinctiv
The other three ?ak'" (vines)
items in the
)'um, and c'ol-represent differ
Tribe Cucurbiteae
the genus Cucurbita. Lagenaria i

Lagenaria Cucurbita

?ak' (vines) bohl ci mayil Cucurbita pepo

+C. moschata
boRz cu mayil c'ol - '0um Sc'ol l'um
.lea I T4 "

u a "T * O b*
.T 1 T T
48

:; rQ :; ~ c..)

FIGURE 5.
FIGURETaxo
6. Tax
labeled taxa
labeled onl
and un

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
BERLIN, BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies 297
There is a widely held view that theThus,
position. "con-conceptually, each of our mul-
timembered "named"
cept of the genus is as old as folk-science it- contrast sets are in actu-
self" (Davis & Heywood 1963:103). It seems
ality subdivided into several more cognitively
clear that this and other midlevel categories
amenable contrastinsets, many of which are in-
taxonomic hierarchies have growncluded up syn- taxa. By recognizing un-
in unnamed
thetically, by the grouping of kinds of plants
labeled taxa, our data show clearly that no
and animals. Specifically, the labeling
contrast setof ini-64 items, while most con-
exceeds
tially unnamed categories that tain prove to fewer taxa than ten.
considerably
have cultural validity and predictiveness
In conclusion, we would like to urge the test-
about the included forms would ing of appear toshallow taxonomic hierar-
superficially
have been a principal route to chies
the for
verbaliza-
the presence of unlabeled midlevel
taxa. We believe that
tion of more and more complex hierarchies. We our evidence shows that
have already considered a probable later
such taxa step
cannot be ignored as insignificant. In
in this process in the example ofthe hihte?.
present Inpaperthewe have outlined several
development and rationalization of formal
procedures by which the investigation of such
Linnaean taxonomy, genus, family, order
hierarchies and
can be carried out, but doubtless
many other midlevel categoriesmany have been
others cande-and eventually will be de-
fined and named as a means of vised. reflecting
A recognitionin-of the existence and an
creasing amounts of information about
evaluation the
of the taxonomic status of such un-
organisims being classified. It is labeled extremely
categoriesin-
will usually be found to lead
structive to examine the structure of a folk to a more psychologically revealing and cul-
taxonomy such as that of the Tzeltal, in which
turally meaningful description of the under-
these midlevel categories are present in anlying
in- conceptual structure of a particular do-
cipient, unlabeled form. In fact, these findings
main, a structure that may otherwise remain
help us to better understand the development obscure.8
and structure of our own "general-purpose"
NOTES
taxonomy.
Our data can also be interpreted as having
1 This research has been financed by the Nationa
some bearing on the somewhat neglected Science
hy- Foundation under the following grant
NSF GS 383, "Comparative ethnobotany of tw
pothesis of Miller (1956) and Wallace (1961)Tzeltal speaking communities," A. Kimball Romne
concerning the capacity of Homo sapiensand to Peter H. Raven, Co-principal investigators
store and process information. Wallace's hy-NSF GS 1183, "Studies in Tzeltal botanical eth-
pothesis states that "irrespective of race, nography,"
cul- Brent Berlin and Peter H. Raven, Co
principal investigators. This support is gratefully a
ture, or evolutionary level, culturally institu-
knowledged. The work is being carried out primaril
tionalized folk taxonomies will not contain more
in the Tzeltal-speaking municipio of Tenejap
Chiapas, Mexico, although new research is bein
than 26 entities and consequently will not require
more than six orthogonally related binary dimen-undertaken in several additional Tzeltal dialects. A
general statement of the physical characteristics o
sions for the definitions of all of the terms" (Wal-
the area is given in Berlin, Breedlove, and Rave
lace 1961:462). The maximum number of (1966).
en- Relevant bibliographic material on lingui
tities that can be contained in a space oftic,
six ethnographic, or botanical work completed
now in progress in highland Chiapas may be ob
binary dimensions is sixty-four and presum-
tained by writing the authors.
ably no folk taxonomy should contain more 2There is some evidence that the noun+noun
than this number of folk taxa. compounds te?ak' (te? [tree]+9ak' [vine]) and can
However, it is clear that Wallace is not re-balam (tan [snake]+balam [tiger]) function as lexic
ferring to the folk taxonomy in toto, but to anyitems indicating "plants" and "animals" respec
particular contrast set contained within it tively. A report to this effect is given in Metzger and
Williams (1966). We have been able to verify
(Colby 1966:15). (See Wallace's [1961:462] this finding for two Tzeltal informants. Howeve
definition of a taxonomy as "a group of sym- long periods of elicitation with many additional in
bols... which denote mutually exclusive but formants lead us to question the widespread appl
jointly exhaustive subsets of referents within acability of these forms with the general meaning
"plants" and "animals." The vast majority of ou
set denoted by a cover symbol [immediatelyinformants indicate that te'ak' more appropriate
including taxon?].") designates "forest" or "woods" while lanbalam re
Should this interpretation be correct, i.e., afers only to a small subset of large four-legged mam
mals.
maximum number of 64 items in any particular
a An interest in unlabeled categories is not new t
contrast set, our data concerning unnamed ethnoscience, although the taxonomic significance
categories would tend to support Wallace's
such categories has not been systematically explore

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 298 American Anthropologist [70, 1968
D'Andrade (n.d.) in one of the 6first
It is assumed, of course, on
papers that the informant can
Tzeltal
read and for
botanical ethnography searched write his native language with
unnamed relative
cate-
gories in another dialect of ease. Much of the His
Tzeltal. most productive
intuitionswork in ethno-
were stated as follows: science depends, in fact, on the use of literate in-
formants (see Metzger and Williams 1963a, 1963b,
Are there sub-groupings in the taxonomic system at a lower
level of contrast than the lowest set of general terms, but at a
1966; Berlin in press; Berlin, Kay, Metzger and
higher level of contrast than the most specific terms?... Is it
Williams n.d., and many other unpublished manu-
really true that no further subdivisions are consistently made
scripts of the work in progress in Chiapas growing
out of the Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford projects
since there are no [labels] for these subdivisions. ... It would
seem likely that these large groups of plants are to some ex-
in that area over the last ten years). Clearly, con-
siderable effort on the part of the ethnographer is re-
tent sub-divided, or at least cross-indexed, to make for a more
efficient mapping [D'Andrade n.d.:1].
quired in developing a practical phonemic orthogra-
phy, training informants to use it, and making cer-
D'Andrade's conclusions were tentative, and recog- tain that many quasi-experimental tasks are under-
nized as such, but there were clear indications that stood. We feel the results far outweigh the loss of re-
midlevel categories could be isolated. These cate- search time. The use of skilled informants has drawn
gories appeared to be determined primarily in terms criticism from certain areas of cultural anthropology.
There are those who look askance at the reliance on
of sets of certain morphological features of individual
plant taxa. highly trained native assistants for fear that their
Whiting (1939) presents some tentative evidence training somehow effects the validity of the results.
for unnamed categories of plants in Hopi. French We are aware of these problems and do not take
(1956) describes Wasco folk botany as lacking mid- them lightly. However, without such training an in-
formant will be unable to make available to the in-
level categories of plants but states that "implicit
categories" may be present. Bulmer and Tyler's (in vestigator many of his native intuitions about his own
press) work on frogs and Acheson's (n.d.) materials culture, intuitions that are perhaps forever outside
on birds are recent examples dealing with ethnozoo- the grasp of even the most perceptive ethnographer.
logical unlabeled taxa. Black (1968) argues for 6 A. Kimball Romney is currently developing a
the presence of an unlabeled taxon in her recent computer program that will allow significantly large
work on Ojibwa. Goodenough (1956) explicitly iden- numbers of items to be grouped into smaller con-
tifies unnamed categories of a paradigmatic nature in ceptual subsets. After the research reported here was
his treatment of Trukese kinship and later (1965) completed, we learned of a field procedure de-
presents evidence for unlabeled classes with taxo- veloped by William Geoghegan that allows one to
nomic significance for American English kinship utilize the triads mentioned on very large numbers
terms. After this paper had been drafted, Paul Kay of items without the aid of mechanical processing.
brought to our attention a personal communication 7 It so happens that the Tzeltal forms in this set
from William Geoghegan that is analogous to correspond fairly closely to recognized botanical
Keesing's (1966:23) remarks and identical to the species, with the obvious exception of Lagenaria
point at issue in this paper. Geoghegan, taking issue siceraria, which is overdifferentiated. Such one-to-
with a point developed in Kay (1966:22), notes: one correspondence is rather rarely the case (Berlin,
"Why must every node in a taxonomy correspond Breedlove, and Raven 1966). The English and Latin
to a lexeme? Analytically this may be so, due to the glosses for the Tzeltal names are approximations
way in which analysis proceeds. But cognitively only and apply specifically to the forms of these
(my bias again) there is no reason to suppose this, exceedingly variable species most familiar to Tzeltal
and it probably isn't true in fact." speakers.
Finally, several recent papers have shown that im- In Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven (1966) we re-
portant domains such as color (Conklin 1955) and ported that Lagenaria siceraria corresponded to the
categories of eating (Landar 1964; Berlin 1967) need Tzeltal taxa k'atk'at bohb, sepsep bohi, cu, and
not be labeled linguistically by a single mono- c'ahk'o2. This data represented a normalization for
lexemic head-term. all informants consulted. The illustrative data uti-
4 The discovery of semantic features, or "char- lized for the present paper were derived from an in-
acters," that are utilized by native speakers in mak- formant who lacks subclasses of bohl (the shape vari-
ing judgments of similarity is one of the major goals etals k'atk'at bohr and sepsep bohr not being recog-
of ethnoscientific research. We do not believe, how- nized) and does not group 1'ahk'o? as a member of
ever that a prior knowledge of these features is athe set of conceptually related gourds and squashes.
prerequisite to the recognition of semantically re-We speculate that its exclusion from the set is due to
lated sets of items. Informants, in the field and inthe fact that the individuals of Lagenaria Yiceraria
quasi-experimental situations, continually volun-that are called e'ahk'o? are "genetic throwbacks"
teered the fact that items "A, B, and C go together," that are not easily recognizable as gourds.
or "are companions." Consequently we feel that as 8 We greatly appreciate the criticisms of H. C.
an operational procedure it is desirable at the outset Conklin, George Cowgill, Marshall Durbin, William
to request that informants make judgments in terms Geoghegan, Richard W. Holm, Terrence Kaufman,
of overall similarity without specifying some set of Paul Kay, A. Kimball Romney, David Schneider,
specific features. Berlin (in press) and Berlin and and William Sturtevant. Kay has been especially
Romney (1964) offer discussions of these procedures helpful in the preparation of the final draft.
in reference to other kinds of linguistic data. Rom-
REFERENCES CITED
ney and D'Andrade (1964) discuss this problem in
reference to the applicability of the method of triads- ACHESON, NICHOLAS H.
testing discussed earlier. Sokal (1966) presents a n.d. The ethnozoology of the Zinacanta
lucid account of problems dealing with over-all dians. ms.
similarity in reference to biological classification in BERLIN, BRENT
general. In press Tzeltal numeral classifiers: a study in

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
BERLIN, BREEDLOVE, & RAVEN] Folk Taxonomies 299
FRENCH,
ethnographic semantics. Janua Linguarum 70DAVID
1956and
(series practica). The Hague, Mouton An exploration of Wasco ethnoscience.
Company. Yearbook of the American Philosophical Soci-
1967 Categories of eating in Tzeltal and Na- ety. Pp. 224-226.
vaho. International Journal of American GOODENOUGH, WARD H.
Linguistics 33:1-6. 1956 Componential analysis and the study of
BERLIN, BRENT, DENNIS E. BREEDLOVE, AND meaning. Language 32:195-216.
PETER H. RAVEN 1965 Yankee kinship terminology: a problem in
1966 Folk taxonomies and biological classifica-componential analysis. In Formal Semantic
tion. Science 154:273-275. Analysis. E. A. Hammel, ed. American Anthro-
In preparation. Studies in Tzeltal botanical pologist 67(5), pt. 2:259-287.
ethnography: principles of classification. GREGG, J. R.
BERLIN, BRENT, PAUL KAY, DUANE METZGER, AND1954 The language of taxonomy: an application
GERALD WILLIAMS of symbolic logic to the study of classificatory
n.d. A proposal for a summer institute of eth- systems. New York, Columbia University Press.
nography. Unpublished ms. JEFFERY, C. E.
BERLIN, BRENT, AND A. KIMBALL ROMNEY 1962 Notes on Cucurbitaceae, including a pro-
1964 The descriptive semantics of Tzeltal nu- posed new classification of the family. Kew
meral classifiers. In Transcultural studies in Bulletin 15:337-371.
KAY, PAUL
cognition. A. Kimball Romney and Roy Good-
win D'Andrade, eds. American Anthropologist1966 Comment [on Colby 1966]. Current An-
66(3), pt. 2:79-98. thropology 7:20-23.
BLACK, MARY KEESING, ROGER M.
1968 Eliciting folk taxonomy in Ojibwa. In 1966 Comment [on Colby 1966]. Current An-
Cognitive anthropology. Steven Tyler, ed. thropology 7:23.
New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston. LANDAR, HERBERT
BULMER, RALPH, AND MICHAEL J. TYLER 1964 Seven Navaho verbs of eating. Interna-
In press. The classification of frogs by the Karam tional Journal of American Linguistics 30:94-
of the Kaironk Valley, New Guinea. Journal of 96.
the Polynesian Society. LOUNSBURY, FLOYD G.
COLBY, B. N. 1964 The structural analysis of kinship seman-
1966 Ethnographic semantics: a preliminary sur- tics. In Proceedings of the Ninth International
vey. Current Anthropology 7:3-32. Congress of Linguistics. Cambridge, M.I.T.
CONKLIN, HAROLD C. Press. Pp. 1073-1099.
1954 The relation of Hanun6o culture to the METZGER, DUANE AND GERALD E. WILLIAMS
plant world. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation1963a
in Tenejapa medicine I: the curer. South-
anthropology, Yale University. western Journal of Anthropology 19:216-234.
1955 Hanun6o color categories. Southwestern 1963b A formal ethnographic analysis of Tene-
Journal of Anthropology 11:339-344. japa Ladino weddings. American Anthropologist
1962a Lexicographical treatment of folk taxon-65:1076-1101.
omies. In Problems in Lexicography. F. W. 1966 Some procedures and results in the study of
Householder and S. Saporta, eds. Indiana native categories: Tzeltal "firewood." Amer-
University Research Center in Anthropology, ican Anthropologist 68:389-407.
Folklore, and Linguistics Publication 21. Pp. MILLER, GEORGE A.
119-141. 1956 The magical number seven, plus or minus
1962b Comment [on Frake 1962]. In Anthropol- two: some limits on our capacity of processing
ogy and Human Behavior. T. Gladwin and W. C. information. Psychological Review 63:81-97.
Sturtevant, eds. Washington, Anthropological ROMNEY, A. KIMBALL
Society of Washington. Pp. 86-91. n.d. Multidimensional scaling and semantic
1964 Ethnogenealogical method. In Explora- domains. Unpublished ms.
ROMNEY, A. KIMBALL AND ROY GOODWIN
tions in Cultural Anthropology: Essays Pre-
sented to George Peter Murdock. W. H. Good-D'ANDRADE
enough, ed. New York, McGraw-Hill. Pp. 25-56. 1964 Cognitive aspects of English kin terms. In
D'ANDRADE, ROY G. Transcultural studies in cognition. A. Kimball
n.d. [Report on Aguacatenango Tzeltal ethno- Romney and Roy Goodwin D'Andrade, eds.
botany] unpublished ms. American Anthropologist 66(3), pt. 2:146-170.
DAVIS, P. H. AND V. H. HEYWOOD SOKAL, ROBERT R.
1963 Principles of angiosperm taxonomy. Edin-1966 Numerical taxonomy. Scientific American
burgh and London, Oliver and Boyd. 215(6):106-116.
DURBIN, MARSHALL STURTEVANT, WILLIAM C.
1964
1966 The goals of ethnoscience. Anthropological Studies in ethnoscience. In Transcultural
Linguistics 8(8):22-41. studies in cognition. A. Kimball Romney and
FRAKE, CHARLES O. Roy Goodwin D'Andrade, eds. American
1961 The diagnosis of disease among the Sub- Anthropologist 66(3) pt. 2:99-131.
WALLACE, A.F.C.
anun of Mindanao. American Anthropologist
63:113-132. 1961 On being just complicated enough. Pro-
1962 The ethnographic study of cognitive sys-ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
tems. In Anthropology and Human Behavior. 47:458-464.
T. Gladwin and W. C. Sturtevant, eds. Wash-
WHITING, A. F.
1939 Ethnobotany of the Hopi. Museum of
ington, Anthropological Society of Washington,
Pp. 72-85, 91-93. Northern Arizona Bulletin 15.

This content downloaded from

194.54.56.110 on Sun, 14 Nov 2021 11:58:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms