On the generic nature of common Northern Sotho bird names: a probe into the cognitive systematization of indigenous knowledge

Abstract

A major claim made here is that, in the categorization of plants and animals by peoples living in traditional societies, there exists a specifiable and partially predictable set of plant and animal taxa that represents the smallest fundamental biological discontinuities easily recognized in any particular habitat. This large but finite set of taxa is special in each system in that its members stand out as beacons on the landscape of biological reality, figuratively crying out to be named. These groupings are the generic taxa of all such systems of ethnobiological classification, and their names are precisely the names of common speech (Berlin, 1992:53). Two questions are addressed in this contribution, namely why Northern Sotho speakers tend to name birds at the generic level by grouping different species together under one and the same common name, whereas common names exist for each and every species in English and Afrikaans; and secondly, whether the Northern Sotho data support the thesis that the human mind is innately structured to organize knowledge about nature taxonomically. Regarding the first question, it is shown that there are very sound cognitive and psychological reasons why natural phenomena such as species are grouped together at the generic level under a single common name. As far as the second question is concerned, it is concluded that the Northern Sotho data do not support the widely held view that the human mind is innately endowed with the capacity to organize knowledge about nature in this way.