Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-2r2wp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-25T00:05:15.627Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Taxonomy and semantic contrast

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Paul Kay
Paul Kay*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The notions ‘taxonomy’ and ‘semantic contrast’ have played an important role in ethnographic semantics, but they are not so simple as is sometimes supposed. In particular, ‘level of contrast’ is an ill-defined and misleading term. When one formulates the notion ‘taxonomy’ in a precise way, as is done here, light is shed on several questions of lexical semantics involving the notion of semantic contrast. For example, several different types of semantic contrast relation, all appearing to have empirical reality, can be formally defined.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 866 - 887
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Beckner, M. 1959. The biological way of thought. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Brent. 1969a. A universalist-evolutionary approach to ethnographic semantics. (Language-Behavior Research Laboratory, working paper 27.) Berkeley: University of California.Google Scholar
Berlin, Brent. 1969b. Speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclature. Unpublished.Google Scholar
Berlin, Brent, Breedlove, Dennis E.; and Laughlin, Robert M. 1969. Lexical retention and cultural significance in Tzeltal-Tzotzil comparative ethnobotany. Paper presented at the Symposium on Mayan Ethnolinguistics, 68th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, La., 20-23 November. (Issued as Language-Behavior Research Laboratory, working paper 29. Berkeley: University of California, 1970.)Google Scholar
Berlin, Brent, Breedlove, Dennis E.; and Raven, Peter H. 1966. Folk taxonomies and biological classification. Science 154.273–5. (Reprinted in Tyler, 60-6.)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berlin, Brent, Breedlove, Dennis E.; and Raven, Peter H. 1968. Covert categories and folk taxonomies. American Anthropologist 70.290–9.Google Scholar
Conklin, Harold C. 1962a. Comment on Frake 1962. In Gladwin and Sturtevant, 86–91.Google Scholar
Conklin, Harold C. 1962b. Lexicographical treatment of folk taxonomies. Problems in lexicography, ed. by Householder, F. W. and Saporta, S. (Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, publication 21), 119–41. Bloomington: Indiana University. (Reprinted in Tyler, 41-59.)Google Scholar
Conklin, Harold C. 1964. Ethnogenealogical method. In Goodenough, 25–56. (Reprinted in Tyler, 93-122.)Google Scholar
Frake, Charles O. 1961. The diagnosis of disease among the Subanun of Mindanao. American Anthropologist 63.113–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frake, Charles O. 1962. The ethnographic study of cognitive systems. In Gladwin and Sturtevant, 72–85. (Reprinted in Tyler, 28-41.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladwin, Thomas, and Sturtevant, W. C. (eds.) 1962. Anthropology and human behavior. Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodenough, Ward H. (ed.) 1964. Explorations in cultural anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Gregg, John R. 1954. The language of taxonomy: an application of symbolic logic to the study of classificatory systems. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/greg93700CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregg, John R. 1967. Finite Linnaean structures. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 29.191–206.10.1007/BF02476893CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gregg, John R. 1968. Buck and Hull: a critical rejoinder. Systematic Zoology 17.342–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregg, John R, and Harris, F. T. C. (eds.) 1964. Form and strategy in science. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, Paul. 1966. Comment on Ethnographic semantics: a preliminary survey, by Colby, B. N. Current Anthropology 7.20–3. (Reprinted with addendum in Tyler, 78-90.)Google Scholar
Lounsbury, Floyd G. 1964. A formal account of the Crow- and Omaha-type kinship terminologies. In Goodenough, 351–94. (Reprinted in Tyler, 212-55.)Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1945. The principles of classification and a classification of mammals. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 85.i-xvi, 1–350.Google Scholar
Sklar, A. 1964. On category overlapping in taxonomy. In Gregg & Harris, 395–401.Google Scholar
Tyler, Stephen A. (ed.) 1969. Cognitive anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
van Valen, L. 1964. An analysis of some taxonomic concepts. In Gregg & Harris, 402–15.Google Scholar