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(JV) Dimba ka:ḍu andare beṭṭa:da me:le solpa maṭṭa irutte, andare onde
leval irutte, beṭṭa:da me:lgaḍe. Adanna dimba.
( Dimba ka:ḍu means it’s a bit fl at on top of a mountain, meaning it’s all
on the same level on the mountain. That’s a dimba .)
(JS) Adu cu:pa:gi iddare, adu bo:ḷi anta baratte, tumba maṭṭa andare, adu dimba.
(If it’s pointy, we call that a bo:ḷi , if it’s very fl at, that’s a dimba .)
5.4 Nomenclatural Considerations
The preceding discussion indicates that the morpheme ka:ḍu is highly polysemous ,
and can be used in words that indicate landscape types and forest/vegetation types,
which are recognized on the basis of biological, topographic and geological features,
as well as human land use patterns. Some types of ka:ḍu are named on the basis of
more than one of the above features, as in the case of kutarega:ḍu , where the fact that
this is a lowland forest is as salient as the fact that only small trees grow here.
Table 5.3 presents a list of all Solega words that contain the morpheme ka:ḍu , along
with the primary features that speakers mentioned in the above extracts as being diag-
nostic of a particular type of ka:ḍu. The ka:ḍu terms are divided into two categories,
‘macro’ and ‘local’, which is a reference to speakers’ assertions that many instances of
the latter type can often be found in a region labeled with one of the former. For
instance, doḍḍa ka:nu ‘ evergreen forest ’ , saṇṇa ka:nu ‘ shola forest ’ and bo:ḷiga:ḍu
‘hilltop grassland ’ can all be found within the realm of beṭṭaga:ḍu ‘mountain forest’
(Extract V). This distinction between ‘macro’ and ‘local’ is not a clear-cut one, how-
ever, as some terms from the latter category are also said to include other, ‘local’ terms
in a partonymic sort of relationship. One such example is (doḍḍa) ka:nu ka:ḍu ‘ever-
green forest’, which is a large expanse of forest, and can extend over river valleys,
mountain slopes and elevated stretches of fl at land. The corresponding aḷḷaga:ḍu ‘river
forest’, bo:re ka:ḍu ‘slope forest’ and dimba ka:ḍu ‘ fl atland forest ’ would then be con-
sidered parts of the larger ka:nu ka:ḍu. One generalization that could be made about the
two categories of ka:ḍu is that the ‘macro’ terms can be said to contain a variety of
vegetation types, while even the larger, more inclusive basic terms (such as doḍḍa
ka:nu ) consist of only one dominant vegetation type, i.e. large trees.
The possible partonymic relations between the various types of ka:ḍu are therefore
determined by commonsense notions of topography and vegetation (there obviously
cannot be a kutarega:ḍu ‘lowland forest’ within a beṭṭa ka:ḍu ‘mountain forest’, just
as there cannot be a bo:ḷi g a:ḍu ‘hilltop grassland ’ inside an aḷḷaga:ḍu ‘river forest’),
and do not represent a strict hierarchy of fi xed ranks or exclusive relations of set inclu-
sion. ‘Macro’ and ‘local’ are used here only for analytical convenience, with the
former denoting broad biogeographical domains, and the latter representing more local-
ized macrohabitats; I am not suggesting that there is a sharp language- or cognition-based
ontological distinction between the two. Still, it is interesting to note that the ‘macro’
terms given in Table 5.3 all focus on the elevation feature, while the ‘local’ terms have
a much bigger range of primary features (with elevation and topography fi guring
prominently in a majority of cases). This is hardly surprising, since three of the
5 Landscape Terms in Solega