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Principles of taxonomy and nomenclature in folk biology first outlined by Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven (1973) are shown to extend to non‐biological and non‐taxonomic folk classification. Four non‐biological taxonomies, American English “automobile” and “tool” taxonomies, a Finnish “winter vehicle” taxonomy, and a Thai “spiritghosts” taxonomy, are presented which clearly manifest so‐called “biological” principles. In addition, a Huastec (male) “body” partonomy is described, offering evidence that taxonomic principles to some extent pertain to non‐taxonomic systematics. These data indicate that principles originally attributed solely to biological classification actually relate to more general aspects of human psychic unity.
Brown et al. (Sun,) studied this question.