ANTHROP 1AB3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Hopi Language, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Linguistic Anthropology
20 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Ethnosemantics study of how different cultures (ethnos) categorize and attach meaning to the world through language and symbols. Focal vocabulary specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to a certain group of people (with particular foci of experience or activity) The ways in which people divide up the world the lexical contrasts they perceive as meaningful or significant reflect their experiences. Inuit have several distinct words for different types of snow , which allows them to perceive and think about snow in different ways. The use of colour terminologies varies across cultures: Berlin and kay"s survey of 100 languages found 10 basic colour terms (white, black, red, yellow, blue, green, brown, pink, orange, purple) that evolve in that order. The number of terms varies with complexity from 2-10 (ex. only light and dark to all). Distinctions between colours are not universal ex. in yucatec, yax refers to both.
