Meaning seems to shift from context to context; how do we know when someone says "grab a chair" that an ottoman or orange crate will do, but when someone says "let's buy a chair," they won't? In Plastic Glasses and Church Fathers, Kronenfeld offers a theory that explains both the usefulness of language's variability of reference and the mechanisms which enable us to understand each other in spite of the variability. Kronenfeld's theory, rooted in the tradition of ethnoscience (or cognitive anthropology), accomplishes three things. First, it distinguishes prototypic referents from extended referents. Second, it describes the various bases of semantic extensions. Finally it details how we use the situational context of usage, the linguistic context of opposition and inclusion, and the conceptual context of knowledge about the world to interpret communicative events.
Author(s): David Kronenfeld
Year: 1996
Language: English
Pages: 288
Contents......Page 10
I. INTRODUCTION AND LINGUISTIC BACKGROUND......Page 14
The Theory, Its Aims and Background......Page 16
Cognitive Anthropology......Page 27
Linguistics......Page 33
Psychological Sources......Page 36
Some Thoughts on the Current Moment......Page 38
Saussure......Page 44
Prague Componential Analysis versus American Descriptive Models......Page 50
II. THE ETHNOSCIENCE TRADITION......Page 58
Basic Units......Page 60
Structures of Opposition and Inclusion......Page 61
Componential Analysis......Page 63
Wallace and Atkins......Page 68
Romney and D'Andrade......Page 71
Comparison......Page 72
Later Romney Work......Page 77
Psychological Reality......Page 78
III. EXPLANATORY PRINCIPLES......Page 84
Lounsbury, Mathematics, and Elegance......Page 86
Kronenfeld Classroom Experiments......Page 87
Nerlove and Romney......Page 92
Reconciliation of Nerlove and Romney with Romney and D'Andrade......Page 98
Prague origins......Page 102
Greenberg's Generalization......Page 103
Semantic Marking......Page 107
Marking Hierarchies......Page 116
Back to Siblings......Page 118
Berlin: Folk Taxonomies......Page 119
Miller's Findings......Page 127
Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin's Version......Page 134
Background: Taxonomies versus Paradigms in Anthropology......Page 140
Implications of Miller's Work for Anthropology......Page 142
Summary......Page 154
IV. SEMANTIC EXTENSION......Page 158
Why an Extensionist Theory is Needed......Page 160
Berlin and Kay: Basic Color Terms......Page 164
Lounsbury: Crow and Omaha......Page 167
Whither Conjunctivity?......Page 170
Kronenfeld: Fanti Kinship......Page 172
Kronenfeld: Kinship Comparison......Page 176
Basso: Apache Pickup Partinomy......Page 178
Kempton: Mexican Ollas......Page 179
10. The Theory......Page 184
The Importance of Cores......Page 185
Learning Langue: Core Senses and Extension......Page 186
The Domain of Books: A Brief Example......Page 189
Assessing Similarity......Page 191
Metaphor......Page 192
Creating New Langue......Page 197
Etymologies and Culture History......Page 199
Functional Relations and Knowledge Structures......Page 201
Some Remaining Questions......Page 203
V. EXTENDED APPLICATIONS......Page 208
Drinking Vessel Study......Page 210
Blackfeet "Full Bloods" versus "Mixed Bloods"......Page 216
Protestants and Catholics, Puritans and Anglicans: Religious Controversy in Reformation England......Page 222
"Men's Work" versus "Women's Work" in Los Angeles......Page 231
Some Thoughts on Ethnicity......Page 237
Identification......Page 239
12. Toward a Theory of the Semantics of Words......Page 245
Appendix: Piagetian Schemas......Page 250
Bibliography......Page 256
B......Page 265
C......Page 266
D......Page 270
E......Page 271
F......Page 274
H......Page 275
K......Page 276
M......Page 278
P......Page 280
R......Page 281
S......Page 282
W......Page 285
Z......Page 286