Speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclature

Abstract

AbstractAssuming the ethnobiological classification evolves as a reflection of cultural development, data are presented which suggest an orderly and predictable temporal appearance of ethnobotanical nomenclatural categories. A general correspondence is seen to exist between the number of categories encoded at any point in time in a particular language's history and degree of sociocultural development. The principles of lexical marking are applied to ethnobiological nomenclature as a means of inferring relative age of the corresponding categories. (Ethnoscience, primitive classification, language universals, cultural evolution.)