Universal #1191

Legacy number: 1191

 Number  1187
 Original  In all cultures/languages, there is a hierarchy of terms referring to the animal and plant kingdoms (and perhaps other domains of folk taxonomies) with at least a superordinate (life form), a basic (generic), and a subordinate (specific) level.

The basic level terms have the highest salience (e.g. are the ones used most frequently, are shortest and morphologically least complex).
 Standardized  In all cultures/languages, there is a hierarchy of terms referring to the animal and plant kingdoms (and perhaps other domains of folk taxonomies) with at least a superordinate (life form), a basic (generic), and a subordinate (specific) level.

The basic level terms have the highest salience (e.g. are the ones used most frequently, are shortest and morphologically least complex).
 Keywords  (biological) folk taxonomy
 Domain  lexicon
 Type  unconditional
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute
 Basis  ?
 Source  Berlin, Breedlove, & Raven 1973; Brown 1984

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