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how tall is a taxonomic tree? some evidence for dwarfism 1
Author(s) -
RANDAL ROBERT A.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1976.3.3.02a00100
Subject(s) - transitive relation , generative grammar , taxonomic rank , taxon , tree (set theory) , taxonomy (biology) , biology , ecology , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science , combinatorics
Several arguments are made in this paper: (1) Taxonomic tree models of folk classification are implicitly generative because they produce appropriate statements which are not in the description itself. (2) The generative devices sometimes postulated—namely, transitive reasoning operating on chains of directly included taxa—do not account for some evidence which another model, the direct comparison between prototypic images, does. (3) Taxonomic trees are probably not stored directly in the memory except perhaps as “dwarf” trees consisting of contrast sets and their names. (4) Routine classification behavior is not so much a matter of producing giant taxonomic trees as it is a matter of selecting, in particular socioeconomic situations, a characteristic of an organism relevant for action .