Abstract

The rich anthropological and ethnographic literature on cattle “color” and “pattern” terms has argued for the central role of the cattle model in the visual systems of pastoral cultures. This study provides further evidence to the idea of a cattle model structuring pastoralists’ visual systems, and it explores the indigenous visual meanings of cattle “color” and “pattern” terms in Hamar, a language spoken in Southwest Ethiopia. The results show that pastoralists communicate and conceptualize all kind of visual experience in terms of cattle appearance: in the Hamar visual system features such as brightness, sheen and (de)saturation, rather than hue, are central to the meanings of at least some “color” terms; moreover, the conceptualization of categories referred to in mainstream languages as “stripes” or “dots” is based on features such as visual conspicuousness and stand-out effects rather than geometrical shape. The methods, tasks and stimuli used in the study were tailored for the collection of comparative data among different pastoral societies of East Africa. Their practical application is discussed, illustrating the effectiveness in revealing important aspects of cattle-centered meanings.

Highlights

  • The linguistic systems attested in pastoral cultures are rich in expressions referring to the physical characteristics of livestock, such as coat colors and patterns, horn shape, ear cut and branding

  • Whereas the cultural relevance of pastoralists’ visual systems has received due attention in the anthropological and ethnographic literature, the study of the semantic systems for appearance and the linguistic encoding of visual qualities in pastoral cultures has not received much attention to date: this is surprising given that pastoral cultures, together with other lesser-studied linguacultures, are often mentioned as having visual systems that challenge the universalist claims on color cognition proposed by the Berlin-Kay paradigm (Berlin and Kay, 1969; Kay and Regier, 2006)

  • This paper presents the preliminary results of a study carried out in Southwest Ethiopia among the Hamar people and it discusses the methodology developed for the investigation of this semantic domain

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Summary

Introduction

The linguistic systems attested in pastoral cultures are rich in expressions referring to the physical characteristics of livestock, such as coat colors and patterns, horn shape, ear cut and branding. This paper presents the preliminary results of a study carried out in Southwest Ethiopia among the Hamar people and it discusses the methodology developed for the investigation of this semantic domain (i.e., the so-called “cattle color and pattern terms”). The study among the Hamar aligns with other ethnographic studies, supporting the view that visual experience is expressed in terms of cattle appearance in pastoral cultures. The cattle model structures other domains of appearance, and in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the indigenous meaning of the categories for appearance in pastoral cultures it is necessary to integrate and triangulate these results with ethnolinguistic analysis and naturalistic data

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