Taxonomy and semantic contrast

The notions ‘taxonomy’ and ‘semantic contrast’ have played an important role in ethnographic semantics, but they are not so simple as is sometimes supposed. In particular, ‘level of contrast’ is an ill-defined and misleading term. When one formulates the notion ‘taxonomy’ in a precise way, as is done here, light is shed on several questions of lexical semantics involving the notion of semantic contrast. For example, several different types of semantic contrast relation, all appearing to have empirical reality, can be formally defined.