Folk-taxonomies in Early EnglishFairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003 - 587 pagina's A folk-taxonomy is a semantic field that represents the particular way in which a language imposes structure and order upon the myriad impressions of human experience and perception. Thus, for example, the experience of color in modem English is structured around an inventory of twelve "basic" color terms; but languages vary in the number of basic color terms used, from thirteen or fourteen terms to as few as two or three. Anthropological linguists have been interested in the comparative study of folk-taxonomies across contemporary languages, and in their studies they have sometimes proposed evolutionary models for the development and elaboration of these taxonomies. The evolutionary models have implications for historical linguistics, but there have been very few studies of the historical development of a folk-taxonomy within a language or within a language family. Folk-Taxonomies in Early English undertakes this task for English, and to some extent for the Germanic and Indo-European language families. The semantic fields studied are basic color terms, seasons of the year, geometric shapes, the five senses, the folk-psychology of mind and soul, and basic plant and animal life-forms. Anderson's emphasis is on folk-taxonomies in Old and Middle English, and also on the implications of semantic analysis for our reading of early English literary texts. |
Inhoudsopgave
Acknowledgments am | 9 |
Introduction | 17 |
The Study of Color Terms across Languages | 55 |
Copyright | |
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according analysis Anglo-Saxon animal appears applied associated basic color terms beasts Beowulf bird blue body Book bright brown called canon century classified color words compared compounds contrast culture dark describes earlier early encoding evidence example fish five folk-taxonomy four French Germanic glosses gold gray Greek green Hebrew historical horse human idea illustrated indicated Indo-European influence John language later Latin learned Level lexicalized life-form light linguistic London means medieval Middle English mind modern English month names native nature noted Old English orange originally Oxford person plant poet poetry possible present proposed Proto-Indo-European purple refers relative represented seasons semantic sense sequence sometimes soul speakers species spring Stage Studies summer symbolic taxon taxonomy texts theory thought tion tradition translation tree University University Press vocabulary wild winter writes yellow þat