172
for urban environments, many of its features appear directly applicable to the Solega
situation. Accordingly:
People form travel plans with the general goal of reaching desired destinations without hav-
ing to invest too much effort... To attain this goal, information about important properties
of the environment must be gained. These properties include the functions of places (e.g.
whether there is a shop, what kind of shop it is, and so forth), the attractiveness of place (if
a place is, for instance, a shop, whether the desired goods are likely to be available, and so
forth), the identity of places (i.e. the characteristics, name and/or perceptual characteristics
that distinguish a particular place from all other places), where the places are located, and
how one can travel to the places. (p. 20)
This model provides a simple, utilitarian rationale for why people might catego-
rise landscapes or forests in particular ways, and why the names for these categories
might only occur in particular contexts in Solega. Solega people categorise their
environment in terms of their interactions with particular places—these might
include seeking out places with resources, avoiding dangerous places, and not lin-
gering in places with no utility. Naturally, such considerations are central to the
potential travel plans that Solega people might have to make on a daily basis.
“ Frequency of use ” (Evans 2003) and “ customary ways of behaving which confi rm
and reinforce [the status of named concepts] as social institutions ” [ 200 ] have been
identifi ed as important ways in which culture can affect language structure. The
Solega landscape terms, with their strong connection to cultural activity, appear to
be signifi cantly affected by these factors.
5.7 Conclusion
The Solega words that denote forest or vegetation types also form an integral part of
the landscape lexicon, mainly because the forest is such a conspicuous part of the
Solega’s visual environment. As shown above, the word ka:ḍu is highly polyse-
mous , and combines with many of the geological landscape terms to denote places
that can be glossed as either physical landscapes, forest types, parts of a forest, or
even areas of human activity. The Solega ka:ḍu words carve up the entirety of their
ancestral lands into discrete units, which appear to contrast with each other largely
on the basis of topographical location, the suites of plant and animal species to be
found in each region, major human activities associated with each location and
prominent abiotic features of the landscape.
As the average Solega has internalized the phenological profi les of all the major
fl owering plants named in his/her language, and is also aware of the migratory pat-
terns of various organisms such as honeybees and elephants , s/he is able to ‘know’
what a given patch of forest is ‘doing’ at any given time. The great importance, of
the living elements of the landscape is also refl ected in the fact that about half of all
Solega place name s make reference to a plant or animal species that is associated
with a particular locality. As a result, the Solega likely perceive their natural envi-
ronment as a mosaic of discrete, but interconnected, patches of habitat comprised of
both abiotic landforms and biological organisms, the condition of which is con-
stantly updated in sync with the cycle of the seasons.
5 Landscape Terms in Solega