Universal 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
- Counterexamples
