Universität zu Köln

Si, Aung ORCID: 0000-0001-8115-9176 and Badenoch, Nathan (2025). The question of universals in ethnobiological nomenclature: Re-examination with southeast Asian linguistic data. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 48 (1). Benjamins. ISSN 0731-3500

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Abstract

The classification and naming of plants and animals is said to follow a number of “universal” constraints cross-linguistically. While these constraints are generally accepted in the literature, few have been rigorously tested with a large language sample. In particular, the languages of mainland southeast Asia appear to have been neglected in such endeavours, even though it is common knowledge that some key constraints are violated in this region. Here, we investigate the construction of “Generic” plant and animal names in 22 languages of mainland southeast Asia, and show that the vast majority of these — especially among plant and fish ethnotaxa — are two-part “secondary names”, in contrast to a major constraint that predicts that such names should be one-part “primary names”. This appears to be a widespread areal feature, and has implications for the validity of other nomenclatural “universals”, which remain to be similarly tested.

Item Type:	Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Si, Aung UNSPECIFIED https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8115-9176 UNSPECIFIED Badenoch, Nathan UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-794815
Identification Number:	10.1075/ltba.23023.si
Journal or Publication Title:	Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Volume:	48
Number:	1
Number of Pages:	41
Date:	17 April 2025
Publisher:	Benjamins
ISSN:	0731-3500
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 1: Kunstgeschichte, Musikwissenschaft, Medienkultur und Theater, Linguistik, IDH > Institut für Linguistik
Subjects:	Language, Linguistics
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/79481