The Traditional Ecological Knowledge of the Solega A Linguistic Perspective

33

minority. Although many models of ethnobiological classifi cation have been pro-
posed in the past, the most infl uential by far has been the hypothesis presented in the
volume Ethnobiological Classifi cation by Brent Berlin [ 9 ], which is a reformulation
of an earlier proposal by Berlin, Breedlove and Raven [ 12 ]. The 1992 work has
directly infl uenced much of the contemporary research effort on folk biological
classifi cation, and it is worth considering some of its main predictions—these are
briefl y described below.

2.2.1 Ethnobiological Classifi cation by Berlin

Berlin ’s model seeks to describe not only the manner in which people categorise the
living organisms around them, but also the constraints on the nomenclature of the
resulting groupings. Following are the main features of the model:

Categorisation

Only a subset of the plants and animals within a locality are named by the humans
who live in that locality.

1. Categorisation is based primarily based on observed morphological and behav-
   ioural affi nities and differences.


2. Taxa are grouped inclusively into a hierarchic (taxonomic) structure.


3. Taxa are spread out over six ranks or levels, whose content is comparable to the
   ranks of western biological classifi cation. The six folk ranks are kingdom, life
   form , intermediate, generic , specifi c and varietal.


4. Across all folk systems of ethnobiological classifi cation , taxa of each rank
   exhibit systematic similarities in their relative numbers and biological content.


5. Some members of generic and subgeneric taxa are thought of as being prototypi-
   cal (the same may be true of life form and intermediate taxa).


6. A substantial majority of folk taxa corresponds closely in content to scientifi c
   taxa. This is especially true for taxa of generic rank.

Nomenclature

7. Intermediate and kingdom-level taxa are often not named (covert) in folk sys-
   tems. Some life form taxa may also be covert.


8. There are two kinds of names—primary and secondary. Primary names can be
   simple ( dog ) or complex ( forget-me-not ), while secondary names are complex
   ( blue gum ), and contain the name of an immediately higher taxon ( gum ).
   Complex primary names can be productive ( catfi sh ), or unproductive ( silver-
   fi s h ). Secondary names form part of a contrast set ( blue gum and river gum ).


9. Generic , life form and intermediate taxa are labelled by primary names, while
   subgeneric taxa (with notable exceptions) are labelled by secondary names.

2.2 Universals in Folk Biological Classifi cation