Where Do Tree Terms Come From?

Abstract

Terms for 'tree' and other general biological categories such as 'grass', 'vine', 'fish' and 'bird' are relatively recent additions to languages. These broad categories have probably developed in response to most individuals being removed from daily intimate contact with the world of plant and animals as societies have increased in size and complexity. We suggest that languages of thousands of years ago either lacked 'tree' or encoded it only as a low salience category by widening the referential application of a term for 'wood.' In this manner many of the world's languages acquired 'wood'/'tree' polysemy. As salience of 'tree' grows with increases in societal complexity, languages tend to lose 'wood'/'tree' polysemy by developing separate terms for each referent.

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