SearchPublisher and Institutes
You are here: Home :: Area CULI :: Linguistics and literature
David W. Fleck
Field linguistics meets biology: how to obtain scientific designations for plant and animal names
Keywords: Amazonian languages, plant names, animal names, dictionary making
This paper proposes methodology and provides practical tips for associating plant and animal names of little-known languages with scientific designations, especially for the purpose of producing accurate dictionary entries. The focus is on how a linguist can accomplish this task with or without the assistance of biologists, while avoiding the unsound practice of relying solely on vernacular names in the contact language. The points presented here are illustrated with examples from Matses, a language in the Panoan family spoken by an indigenous society living in western Amazonia, with whom the author has conducted extensive zoological, ethnobiological and linguistic field research.
STUF – Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Akademie Verlag
Print ISSN: 0942-2919
Volume: 60, 01/2007
Pages: 081 - 091