71omitted in certain contexts. The most common type of context where this happens
is the recitation of a list, such as when a person is asked to name the types of trees
that one usually fi nds in a particular forest type. The following extract from a larger
narrative in which the speaker describes the features of evergreen forest s illustrates
this phenomenon:
Example: Ka:ninalli ha:le mara ade, thuruve mara ade, kakkilu, bikkilu, bella:ḍe, ku:ma:
vũ, kende, soravilu ...
In the evergreen forest , you fi nd Wrightia sp. , Ligustrum perotteti, Celtis tetrandra,
Elaeocarpus serratus, Neolitsea zeylanica, Cinnamomum sulphuratum, Elaeocarpus tuber-
culatus, Acrocarpus fraxinifolius ...
Plant name s can also be modifi ed depending on their location in an extended
narrative. Names are often shortened when they are fi rst presented at the start of a
narrative to herald the start of a new topic of conversation. Typically, a person will
fi rst state the bare plant name in isolation at the start of his/her conversational turn,
and may revert to using the full name later in the turn. This phenomenon has also
been recorded in the use of bird name s , where the superordinate label hakki ‘bird’
can be dropped from some names in such a situation (see Sect. 4.3 in Chap. 4 ).
Finally, large, culturally important trees that are given proper names (see Sect. 3.8
below) do not require the mara ‘tree’ label, and are referred to using the bare species
name, with appropriate locative or descriptive epithets. Examples include doḍḍa
sampage ‘big Michelia champaca ’ and gummana guḍḍe ta:ri ‘ owl hill Terminalia
bellerica ’, which are the names of an important sacred tree and a bee tree respec-
tively (Table 3.3 ).
As with many other languages of the Indian subcontinent, the Solega language
allows modifi cation of a noun through a simple, regular lexical operation to increase
the scope of the noun to include additional concepts that are semantically or contex-
tually associated with it. This operation is carried out by reduplicating the target
word, and modifying the initial sound of the second token. Different Indian lan-
guages require a different sound modifi cation, and in Solega and Kannada , the fi rst
syllable of the reduplicated token is replaced with a gi-. As an example, the Solega
word a:ne ‘ elephant ’ can be modifi ed to a:ne-gine ‘ elephants and other similar crea-
tures’. Although the phrase “and other animals” at fi rst appears vague and unhelp-
ful, Solega speakers have no diffi culty in understanding such constructions, as the
context of the utterance usually only affords one interpretation. In the following
example, a:ne-gine is used in the context of the speaker’s fi elds being raided by wild
animals. This context narrows down the potential types of animals being referred to
by the speaker to those large herbivores that are known to cause considerable dam-
age to crop plants—wild pigs, deer and buffaloes.
A:ga beḷe beḷedu uṭṭu eraḍu varsha mu:ru varsha ma:ḍu uṭṭu, a:ne gine bandu nuggu uḍtu
andale tindu uḍtittu adava.
Then (I) planted crops for 2 or 3 years, but if elephants and other animals came (to my
fi eld), they would eat everything.
As in many languages, the topmost (in the ethnoclassifi cation hierarchy) super-
ordinate categories of all plants and all animals tend to be unnamed, or ‘covert’,
categories [ 9 ]. Nevertheless, Solega people do frequently make reference to these
3.6 Ethnospecies Names and Linguistic Conventions