The Wagiman Landscape: Mental Maps and Prototypes

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the classification of the landscape, both biota and terrain, in Wagiman, a language of northern Australia. There is considerable debate as to the comparative roles of cognitive and cultural factors in the analysis of landscape terminologies. Any analysis of terminologies necessarily involves consideration of meaning. There are many approaches to the analysis of meaning and analysis of Wagiman landscape classification requires at least two approaches. One approach involves necessary and sufficient conditions for connotation, and the other involves prototypes. The comparative roles of cognitive and cultural factors vary depending upon the approach to meaning, with cognitive factors playing a greater role in connotation and cultural factors playing a greater role in prototypes. The current research literature on Australian languages examines behavioural and morphological oppositions, material make‐up, shape, size as cognitive factors and affordance and human usage as cultural factors. This paper provides evidence that there is another cultural factor which plays a central role in prototype classification, mental maps of the landscape involving zonal oppositions. Prototypes for many terms do not have an individuated reference but rather have an unindividuated reference to typical zones of occurrence.