28 Dirk Geeraerts and Dirk Speelman
VOET 'front part of the foot', AFHANGEND KUIFJE (BIJ KORTGEKNIPT HAAR)
'forelock, cowlick (in case of short hair)' in contrast with habitual ones like
KEEL 'throat', KNIE 'knee', MIDDELVINGER 'middle finger'.
- The inclusion of the number of observational gaps is motivated by the
idea that a high number of places without responses may be an indirect
indication of lack of familiarity with the concept: if the informants are un-
able to provide a name for a concept, then that may mean that they simply
do not know the concept (and that, in turn, may be a significant factor con-
tributing to overall onomasiological heterogeneity). However, this reason-
ing assumes that the concept was indeed included in the survey. By restrict-
ing the database to the questionnaires N10, N106, N107, N108 and N109,
we have tried to ensure that this is indeed the case, but we cannot be en-
tirely certain about the observational systematicity of the materials. An
observational gap, in other words, is ambiguous between actual unfamiliar-
ity and an inconsistency in the survey procedure. Some caution with regard
to this factor will be in order, then, all the more so since there might be a
mathematical effect on heterogeneity in the opposite direction of what we
expect (fewer measurements may lead to a smaller number of names, thus
possibly reducing heterogeneity). In operational terms, the number of ob-
servational gaps is quantified straightforwardly as the absolute number of
places (out of the total of 201 places) in which no names were given for the
concept at hand. Concepts with few responses are, for instance, SLECHT
GROEIEN 'not to grow well, to grow slowly', GELUIDLOZE WIND 'noiseless
fart', KAAKGESTEL 'jawbone' and HUIG 'uvula'. - The number of multiword expressions in the onomasiological range of a
concept may be considered an indication of lack of salience for two rea-
sons. (Throughout the paper, we use the concept 'onomasiological range' to
refer to the total set of expressions that occur as designations of the con-
cept. If we take into account the relative frequency of those expressions
within the onomasiological range, we talk about an 'onomasiological pro-
file'.) First, the basic level hypothesis (Berlin and Kay 1969, Berlin 1978)
suggests that cross-linguistically basic concepts are typically referred to
with short words. Second, multiword answers may derive from the fact that
people answer with a periphrastic description of the concept either because
there is no name for the concept in their dialect or because they don't know
it: informants may creatively invent names on the spot because they don't
know what to answer. According to the first reason, multiword expressions