Recent studies of folk biology clearly reveal the detailed empirical knowledge of living things which is an important and characteristic element of pre-scientific cultures. This paper attempts a contribution to the study of such systems of knowledge by analyzing the comparable skills of a few American birdwatchers. The process of identification of…

The categorizations which humans make of the concrete world are not arbitrary but highly determined. In taxonomies of concrete objects, there is one level of abstraction at which the most basic category cuts are made. Basic categories are those which carry the most information, possess the highest category cue validity, and are, thus, the most…

In learning a second language, the student should not only learn the native speaker's patterns of phonology, morphology, and syntax; but he should also internalize the native speaker's collective view of the universe and the appropriate related behavior patterns, both linguistic and nonlinguistic. Languages divide reality into different…