general principles of human anatomical partonomy and speculations on the growth of partonomic nomenclature¹

Abstract

Berlin and Kay's (1969) pioneering research in the area of color categorization and Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven's (1973) recent innovative work in folk biology present ethnoscience with an alternative to its patent relativistic perspective on naming behavior.' Rather than focusing upon different ways in which speakers of various languages classify and name simliar phenomena, these two studies demonstrate universal principles in categorization processes, thereby giving new impetus to the anthropological determination o f parameters of human psychic unity.3These studies treat somewhat different kinds of universals. Berlin and Kay's (1969) approach fundamentally involves description of the pervasive manner in which a perceptual space, i .e., the color spectrum, is partitioned? They determine that certain lexemes o f every language-basic color terms-are related referentially to the same focal areas of the perceptual grid. On the other hand, Berlin, e t al. (1973), rather than treating the relationship o f categorization t o structured perception, isolate universal principles of nomenclature (labeling) connected with classificatory systems, i.e., biological folk taxonomies. The kinds of principles discovered by Berlin, e t al. can be conveniently referred to as classification-nomenclature universals to distinguish them from classification-perception universals described by Berlin and Kay. ' Brown, Kolar, Torrey, Trdbng-Quang, and Vol kman (1 976) suggest that specific classification-nomenclature universals discovered for both biological (cf. Berlin, e t al. 1973) and nonbiological (cf. Brown, e t al. 1976) folk taxonomy pertain as well to certain nontaxonomic category systems. Because o f their resemblance in several respects to folk taxonomies, these systems have been named "partonomies" (cf. Brown, e t al. 1976).There are a number of differences as well as similarities between partonomies and taxonomies-see especially McClure (1 975) for differences; definitionally the most significant difference i s that partonomies are based on "part of" relationships, while taxonomies are based on "kind of" relationships. This paper is concerned with describing both classification-perception and classification-nomenclature principles in human anatomical partonomy. Some speculative comments concerning the growth of partonomic nomenclature are also offered.

Categorical perception of tactile distance

“…There are a number of reasons that may explain why the categorical effect is more evident on the ventral surface; here we will briefly CATEGORICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE BODY 18 discuss visual and functional accounts. Andersen (1978;see also, Biederman, 1987;Brown, 1976) proposes that the mental representation of the body is broken down into visuospatial geons. If body part categories are based on visual discontinuities, those between hand and arm are more evident on the ventral surface; the wrist is typically visibly marked by a number lines segmenting the hand and the arm.…”

More than skin deep: Body representation beyond primary somatosensory cortex

“…If, however, a language did label 'hand', then the label was a primary lexeme (i.e., is not derivative from another term, as with, for example, 'fingernail'). Conversely, while always labelled, terms for fingers and toes were often secondary (i.e., derivative) lexemes (Brown, 1976). While subsequent studies have called the literal universality of some such rules into question (e.g., Enfield, Majid, & van Staden, 2006;Palmer & Nicodemus, 1985), there are, nevertheless, striking regularities in the organisation of body part terms.…”

“…The relation between a node in a taxonomy and its immediately superordinate node is characterised by 'type of' relations (e.g., a robin is a type of bird). In contrast, several authors have described knowledge about body parts as being organised into a structure called a partonomy (Brown, 1976;McClure, 1975), in which the relation between subordinate and superordinate elements is characterised by 'part of' relations (e.g., an arm is part of a body, but is not a type of body). While a partonomy is a specific type of data structure, representing the structural organisation of bodies, the more general process of segmenting the body into parts is known as body mereology (de Vignemont, Tsakiris, & Haggard, 2005b).…”

“…Indeed, even more problematic for the concept of partonomy is the hesitance of many speakers to admit the validity of the 'part of' relation even to an immediately superordinate node. For example, many English speakers are not comfortable with the claim that 'a hand is part of an arm', preferring to say that 'a hand is connected to an arm' (Brown, 1976;McClure, 1975). From such observations, Palmer and Nicodemus (1985) argued that contiguity and spatial relations, rather than part-whole relations, underlie semantic knowledge about bodies.…”

“…Early linguistic studies of body-part nomenclature (e.g., Andersen, 1978;Brown, 1976;McClure, 1975) focussed on the idea that cultural and linguistic universals in body part terms could be described, analogous to the universals found to underlie domains such as colour (Berlin & Kay, 1969) and folk biology (Berlin, Breedlove, & Raven, 1973). For example, while all languages studied had verbal labels for 'fingers' and 'toes', several languages (e.g., Romanian) did not have a label for 'hand ' (McClure, 1975).…”