Ethnotaxonomy

The term ethnotaxonomy noted either to that subdiscipline within ethnology which studies the taxonomic systems defined as alive as used by individual ethnic groups, or to a operative individual taxonomy itself, which is the thing of the ethnologist's instant study.

For example, in many West African languages, the perceptual world of color is classified into the principal categories "Red," "White," & "Black" finer gradations being secondary. The range of wavelengths that an English-speaker calls blue would be a subcategory of "Black." See also Blue–green distinction in language

The set of categories of familial relationships evinced by the ethnic group's kinship system is another ethnotaxonomy. An example of this might be the Hawaiian kinship system, where all members of a shape of the same sex are planned to by a single term. Both the relationships termed mother and aunt in English fall into the same taxon "Mother-Aunt". This does non mean that the users of this taxonomy are confused approximately the concept "Birth-Mother," only that it is a subcategory.

Conversely, an ethnotaxonomy such(a) as the ancient Rome, where no two relationships hit the same denotation, may show much more granularity than the English system. Thus the relationship called aunt in English is non fundamental in Latin, but either amita "Father's Sister" or matertera "Mother's Sister" must be chosen. Latin and Sudanese are called a "descriptive systems," and Hawaiian is called a "classificatory" system, but this terminology is English-centered see Lewis H. Morgan, the difference being one of degree, rather than kind.

Categories of plants, "Useful" and "Harmful," etc., are yet another well-known example. Indeed, in recent years there has been a vogue ownership of the term ethnotaxonomy limiting it to ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology, because of the "rediscovery" of the medicinal and commercial advantage of plants disclosed by examining the botanical ethnotaxonomies of lesser-known cultures.

Animal folk taxonomy in the Kalam language of Papua New Guinea has been extensively studied by Ralph Bulmer and others.