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Typological categorization within lexical fields and conceptual domains.
The basic idea underlying cross-linguistic research on categorization within
lexical fields and conceptual domains (coherent segments of experience and
knowledge about them) is that human experience is not delivered in nicely pre-
packed units, categories, and types, but has to be chunked, organized and
categorized by human beings themselves. Categories correspond to experiences
that are perceived to have features in common. When experiences are
systematically encoded by one and the same linguistic label (e.g., by the same
word) they are, most probably, perceived as being fairly similar to each other; that
is they are taken to represent one and the same class or to correspond to one and
same concept or lexical meaning.
A simple example of what can be meant by different ways of categorizing,
or carving up a conceptual domain across languages is given in Table 1, which
shows how the inventories of body-part terms in six languages differ in the extent
to which they distinguish between hand vs. arm, foot vs. leg, and finger vs. toe by
conventionalised, lexicalised expressions (“labels”).
Table 1: Hand vs. arm, foot vs. leg, finger vs. toe in English, Russian,Uzbek,
Italian, Rumanian,Estonian and Japanese.
English Russian Uzbek Italian Rumanian Estonian
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