Premium
apples are not a “kind of fruit”: the semantics of human categorization
Author(s) -
WIERZBICKA ANNA
Publication year - 1984
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.1984.11.2.02a00060
Subject(s) - categorization , lexicon , noun , linguistics , semantics (computer science) , taxonomy (biology) , typology , computer science , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , sociology , philosophy , biology , ecology , anthropology , programming language
This paper examines the semantic structure of English classificatory terms in the area of concrete lexicon, linking differences in semantic structure with differences in grammatical characteristics of different classes of nouns. I argue that in recent literature on human categorization the strictly taxonomic categories (i.e., categories based on hierarchies of kinds) have not been distinguished from other types of categories. I discuss four types of supercategory that do not stand for “a kind of thing”: two different types of collective supercategories that stand for heterogeneous collections of things, a supercategory that stands for heterogeneous classes of materials, and a supercategory of purely functional concepts . [semantics, categorization, taxonomy, ethnobiology, cognition]