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‘Fish’ and ‘Non-Fish’ in Lio and Nage: Folk-Intermediates and Folk-Generics in the Fish Classification of Two Eastern Indonesian Peoples

Gregory Forth^1*

¹Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

^*gforth@ualberta.ca

Received February 9, 2017 | Accepted May 18, 2017

Abstract Based on recent field research on Flores Island, this paper describes the classification of fish found among the Lio people. Formally, Lio fish taxonomy closely resembles that of the Nage of central Flores, discussed in a previous paper (Forth 2012), but differs insofar as several kinds of freshwater fish, all members of the Gobioidei, are subsumed in a named folk-intermediate taxon labeled mbo. Most attention is given to Lio names for folk-generics included in this intermediate. These correspond to the same species and genera included in a Nage folk-intermediate which, however, is unnamed. Moreover, Lio names for the component generics are clearly motivated by the same morphological and behavioral features as are reflected in Nage names for the same generics, yet the Lio names themselves are lexically quite different. These simultaneous classificatory similarities and nomenclatural differences are discussed with reference to the parts played by a common cultural heritage and natural discontinuity in the categorization of fish among these two ethno-linguistically related groups.

Introduction

In previous publications (Forth 2012, 2016), I described how the Nage people of Flores Island in eastern Indonesia classify fish. Occurring as a named life-form in Nage taxonomy, ika (‘fish’) reflects Proto-Austronesian *Sikan (Blust 2002:125). At the same time, Nage ika refers mostly to marine fish, creatures that are poorly known to this highland-dwelling people, and only implicitly does it incorporate five categories (or folk-generics, sensu Berlin 1992) of freshwater gobies—all members of the suborder Gobioidei—with which Nage are far more familiar. The present article explores a comparable ethno-ichthyological classification more recently investigated in the ethnolinguistically related but distinct Lio region of east central Flores, located some 120 to 150 km to the east of Nage territory.

A particular issue in Lio classification concerns how the Lio names denoting the five kinds of gobies correspond to Nage names for what are evidently the same species. Although Nage and Lio both belong to the Ngadha-Lio grouping of languages, the names they apply to these fish are lexically quite different yet reveal a high degree of semantic correspondence, with mostly the same empirical features being employed to distinguish and designate the same ichthyological species or genera. Qualifying an overall similarity between Lio and Nage fish classification, an important folk taxonomic difference lies in the fact that only Lio expressly include these five generics as members of a named ‘folk-intermediate’ (sensu Berlin 1992), a variety of folk taxon exemplified by English ‘bird-of-prey’ and previously characterized as typically being unnamed (Forth 2016:31, 33–34). In this way, the present study draws attention to the folk-intermediate as an underexamined component of folk taxonomies and as a relatively neglected topic in theoretical work on folk biological knowledge. Also, concerning connections between classification and nomenclature, a close examination of similarities and differences between Lio and Nage fish taxa further contributes to an understanding of the folk-generic, especially regarding the relative influence of cultural and inherent perceptual factors (or ‘natural discontinuity’) in representing and naming generics, categories that have usually been treated as the basic units of any system of folk taxonomy.

Obtained during three visits to Flores between 2014 and 2016, information of Lio fish classification was recorded in the districts of Mego and Paga, in the easternmost part of the Lio region, and derives mostly from conversations with Lio residents in the conjoined Mego settlements of Nua Lolo and Léke Ba’i and in the south coastal villages of Wara, Ma’u Lo’o, and Wolo Wiro. Principal informants included eight men who regularly engaged in fishing, or did so in their younger years. Ages ranged from 39 to 73; the mean age was 57.6 and the median was 59.5. Research was mostly conducted within the region in which a dialect identified as ‘East Lio’ is spoken (Suryati et al. 2013). According to the same source, Ma’u Lo’o and Wolo Wiro villagers should be speakers of ‘Central Lio,’ but this appears to affect neither the names nor the forms of classification of freshwater fish discussed here.

Combined with general, non-directive ethnographic conversations, more directive questioning about freshwater fish was conducted employing a combination of Lio and Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian national language) and partly took the form of free-listing, requesting people to list the Lio names of all fish and other aquatic creatures they knew that occurred in local rivers and streams. The same method was applied to sea fish. Once names were identified, I asked informants to describe the form, appearance, and habits of the creatures each designated. Information on both freshwater and marine fish was further obtained from observing specimens caught by fishermen. Photographs were taken of specimens as an aid to questioning and matching these to Linnean taxa. Considerable assistance in identifying species from photographs was kindly provided by Professor Akihisha Iwata, an ichthyologist at Kyoto University and an internationally recognized specialist in the suborder Gobioidei. Very little has been published on Flores freshwater fish. Just over twenty years ago, Kottelat (1994:422) stated that “we know nothing about the freshwater fish fauna” of Nusa Tenggara (the eastern Indonesian region which includes Flores), and there is no indication the situation has significantly changed since then.

Lio, Nage, and fish

In addition to speaking related languages, in terms of livelihood, indigenous social organization, and general culture, Lio do not differ greatly from Nage. Like Nage, Lio are primarily cultivators, raisers of livestock, and sometime hunters. For present purposes, the most important difference is that the eastern Lio I worked with live closer to the sea, specifically the Sawu sea on Flores’ south coast. Villagers in Nua Lolo and Léke Ba’i, the source of most of my information on fish, are moreover traditionally allied with the coastal village of Wara, located about four kilometers due south. Wara men spend most of their time engaged in maritime fishing, and during the twentieth century Nua Lolo and Léke Ba’i villagers also would seasonally participate in fishing expeditions—either going out in vessels or catching fry (recognized by Lio as the immature forms of gobies and other freshwater species) as they enter estuaries. In addition, Nua Lolo, Léke Ba’i and other inland Mego villages are situated close to the river Wajo (Kali Wajo), a major water course that empties into the Sawu Sea near Wara. To the present, villagers regularly catch fish, eels, and crustaceans in the Wajo, employing traditional traps, nets, and weirs and increasingly the environmentally harmful and dangerous method of shock-fishing with motor batteries (or, sometimes, small generators) and electric prods. Somewhat in contrast to Lio, Nage exploit freshwater fish less than they once did, and especially in central Nage (the region in which my ethnozoological studies have been concentrated) people claim the number of fish and other creatures available in local rivers and streams has significantly declined in recent years—in part due to the harmful modern technologies also employed in Lio (Forth 2012). But although fish numbers are now reduced, and their importance for subsistence has accordingly decreased, Nage are still knowledgeable about the various local categories I describe in this study.

Within the unique-beginner (sensu Berlin 1992) labeled ana wa (‘animal’), Nage include ika (fish) as a named life-form. Lio ika has the same status, although for Lio, ‘animal’ in the most comprehensive sense is denominated by binata, an obvious adaptation of Malay binatang (‘animal’) (Arndt 1933; Forth 2004). Like its Nage cognate, as a life-form taxon Lio ika subsumes not just bony fish (Osteichthyes) but also sharks (ika iu) and rays (ika pari)—both Chondrichthyes or cartilaginous fish—and sea mammals, including whales (léla ngai), dolphins (lobu), and dugongs (called ruju, ika ruju, or ata ruju). Also like Nage, Lio do not usually regard marine turtles (kéra) as ika (fish). I once recorded ‘ika kéra’ as an item of observed speech, but subsequent enquiries revealed that this is not a regular expression. And Lio ika also does not include eels (nake)¹, freshwater and saltwater crustaceans (kura, mongga, kojo), or cephalopods (octopuses, kubi, and squids, wenu).

In both Nage and Lio classification, ika is polysemous, for in addition to denoting a life-form taxon, the term labels a less inclusive class of fish. Among Nage this class admits a further distinction of ‘sea fish’ (ika mesi, specifically marine bony fishes) and river fish (ika lowo), categories I have previously treated as folk-intermediates. The same distinction is recognized by Lio, who express it with the same terms. Moreover, contrasting to ika at the intermediate level in the classification of both groups are the several previously mentioned categories of freshwater gobies. Nage describe these as forming a distinct, albeit unnamed folk-intermediate that I have previously called the ‘tebhu cluster’, after its best-known member (Forth 2012, 2016:211–216), and in view of this contrast they regularly state that gobies are not ika (‘fish’).

Previously, I interpreted the Nage distinction not as referring to ika as a life-form (which includes sharks, whales, and dugongs as well as bony fish) but to ika as a folk-intermediate. In a remarkably similar way, Lio also say the Gobioidei are not ‘fish’ (ika), and whereas both groups commonly assert that ika are all creatures of the sea, like Nage they nevertheless recognize a number of folk-generics called ika which occur in freshwater (see Table 1). By all indications, among Lio as well the gobies are distinguished from ika specifically at the intermediate level and not from the entirety of ‘fish’ (ika). One support for this are the numerous times I recorded Lio as well as Nage describing gobies as ‘fish’ (ikan) when speaking Bahasa Indonesia (see Forth 2012). Another is the general point that speakers of any language are often not conscious of, nor do they articulate, different contextual senses of single terms. In fact, the classificatory contrast between sea fish and freshwater fish—in these ethnographic instances represented solely by gobies—appears to be more widespread on Flores Island. For Manggarai, the language of western Flores, Verheijen (1967) glosses ikang (a cognate of Nage and Lio ika) as ‘(sea) fish’ (BI ‘ikan (laut)’). Similarly, a native speaker of Biting, a dialect of eastern Manggarai, informed me that ikang denotes only sea fish (including sharks) and some freshwater fish—apparently mostly recently introduced exotics (cf. Forth 2016:212, 214)—whereas other freshwater fish are not classified as ikang².

 

Table 1 List of Lio freshwater fish generics identified as Ika.

Lio name	Linguistic notes and identification
ka mbara ae	Described as a ‘clear white’ fish. Arndt (1933) lists ika mbara simply as a ‘river fish’. The relevant meaning of mbara here may be ‘clear, transparent, translucent’; ae is ‘water’, ‘water course’ (cf. Nage ika ae, river fish, a synonym of ika lowo).
Ika mbulo	A fish numerous in river estuaries. (Arndt, 1933, gives mbulo as ‘marine eel’ and ana mbulo as a ‘sea fish’).
Ika ro	Ro is ‘(to) sting, smart, be painful’. The fish is so named because being stuck by its sharp scales (or spines) is very painful. Lio described the fish as resembling a catfish and say it cannot be caught with a hook and line, unlike other river fish (ika).
Ika seli watu	The name means ‘slides, sticks between stones’. Described as a brownish fish, very similar to a milkfish (Indonesian ‘ikan bandeng’) Chanos chanos (see Figure 1A).
Ika ka’i kapa	The name translates as ‘thick-scaled fish, fish with thick scales’. Lio in Léke Ba’i described both this kind and the following as not occurring in local rivers but only at higher elevations, in deep pools of cold water.
Ika éwa nawa	Ēwa, ‘fish’s tail’; nawa, ‘freckle, liver spot, birthmark’ (Arndt 1933). Lio describe the tail as speckled.

 

It is by now sufficiently clear that Lio fish classification is, in most respects, formally similar to that of the Nage. But there is one important difference. Whereas the five Nage generics included in the ‘tebhu cluster’ do not compose a named intermediate, for the Lio they do, since all five, and another two kinds I was unable to identify, are classified as members of a folk-intermediate Lio named mbo. Mbo is clearly cognate with Nage bo in the name ana bo, a synonym of ana tebhu, the prototype of the five fish generics that compose the ‘tebhu cluster’³. In addition, Lio further employ mbo polysemously, to label one of the folk-generics included in intermediate mbo (see Table 2), and by all indications this is the same species Nage name ana bo or ana tebhu.

 

Table 2 Folk-generics Lio identify as kinds of mbo.

Lio name	Identification,  description, and linguistic notes
Mbo boka janga, or simply mbo	A freshwater goby Sicyopterus sp., Gobiidae, suborder Gobioidei. Arndt (1933, s.v. boka) lists boka janga (transcribed boka dzan’a) as ‘twigs of Janga’, the name of an unidentified plant or tree. Verheijen 1990 gives Lio (Detu Keli) janga as Kleinhovia hospita. If the identification is correct, then the name apparently refers to some resemblance between the form or coloration of the fish and the leaves or bark of the tree.
(Mbo) Mata taka	Loach goby Rhyacichthys aspro, Rhyacichthyidae, suborder Gobioidei. Informants correctly describe the fish as attaching itself to rocks on stream bottoms. Possessing a flattened head and ventral mouth, the fish more specifically attaches itself to stones with its broadened pelvic and pectoral fins and head and snout (Larson 2011:55). The name refers to this behaviour. Mata is ‘eye; node; central part (of something)’; taka, is ‘to stick, adhere to’ (Arndt 1933).
(Mbo) Kia ri’a	Throatspine gudgeon Belobranchus belobranchus, Eleotridae. Named after its relatively large head (kia is ‘head, cranium’; ri’a is ‘big, large’).
(Mbo) Kose ena	Awaous sp., Godiidae; so named because the fish lives in sandy stream beds (ena, ‘sand’; kose, ‘to fit closely, tightly into or between (two things)’) (Arndt 1933). Lio informants glossed the name with Bahasia Indonesia ‘masuk pasir’, ‘enters, goes into sand’, and indeed, the shape of the snout is adapted to precisely this behaviour (Akihisha Iwata 2015, personal communication). Among the several kinds of mbo (gobies), Lio say only these can be caught with a hook and line, like eels and freshwater ika (fish), whereas all other mbo are caught with weirs and traps. The species is not certain. Monk et al. (1997) list three species for eastern Indonesia (Nusa Tenggara and Maluku): Awaous grammepomus, A. personatus, and A. melacocephalus, the Largesnout goby.
(Mbo) Kole kanda	Unidentified, but may refer in part to females of Belobranchus belobranchus. Described as a ‘stupid’ fish, in the sense that it does not swim away when approached and is therefore easily caught. Informants interpreted the name as referring to this characteristic. One man equated kanda with BI ‘kandang’ (enclosure, corral); Arndt gives it as ‘basket’ or ‘cage for chickens’. He also lists kole as ‘to lay, set down (trans.)’. The sense, therefore, may well be that the fish stays in one spot, as though placed in a container.

 

Lio recognize the same physical and behavioral differences between mbo and ika (or specifically freshwater ika) as do Nage, in regard to body shape, swimming habits, and so on (Forth 2012, 2016:211). Also, as fish occurring in often fast-flowing rivers and streams, mbo are mostly caught with weirs and traps, whereas ika occurring in rivers are usually caught with hook and line. There are, however, exceptions to this, since Lio employ lines to catch one sort of mbo (specified as kose ena) while some ika occurring in rivers are also caught in traps. As I previously concluded for the Nage tebhu cluster (Forth 2012:27), therefore, the folk-intermediate Lio label as mbo is evidently a fully-formed taxon based on morphological and behavioural features rather than simply a utilitarian or other culturally specific ‘special-purpose’ category (see Berlin 1992:142–144). A list of the Lio mbo fish, with identifications and descriptions, is found in Table 2 (see also Figures 1 and 2); a list of freshwater ika distinguished by Lio appears in Table 1.

 

Figure 1 A Ika seli watu, a freshwater fish (Lio ika); B Mbo ki’a ri’a (Belobranchus belobranchus); CNake or nake léro, eel (Anguilla sp.) showing dark speckling on yellow ground color. Photos: Gregory Forth.

 

Figure 2 A Mbo or mbo janga (Sicyopterus sp.); B Mbo kose ena (Awaous sp.); C Mbo mata taka (Rhyacichthys aspro) showing attachable ventral fins. Photos: Gregory Forth.

 

All the categories listed in Table 2 can be explicitly named as mbo (e.g., mbo mata taka) or alternatively by the specific name alone (e.g., mata taka). As indicated, all these names are straightforwardly descriptive of a morphological or behavioural feature of the fish concerned. The same applies to the several categories of freshwater fish Lio identify as ika, which are listed in Table 1, although in these cases ika is a necessary component of each name. In addition to the five generics described in Table 2, all of which I was able to observe, informants mentioned two other kinds of mbo. One is mbo bita. Bita means ‘mud’, and indeed the fish is described as living in mud. The other is mbo kéle te’a, described as showing yellow (te’a) under the front fins (kéle is ‘armpit’). Informants also described this fish as being ‘stupid’ and easy to catch, thus somewhat like mbo kole kanda.

Lio mbo has another use that requires attention. The several folk-generics included under mbo are among the aquatic creatures Lio collectively designate with the standard expression kura mbo. This term, however, does not denote a taxon but a utilitarian category comprising two animal names, a type of construction extremely common in the languages of central Flores (Forth 2016:140–148). Complementing mbo in this context, kura, ‘prawn, crayfish’ (cf. Nage kuza), refers to several kinds of freshwater crustaceans. But, as Lio themselves recognize, the class of edible creatures labelled kura mbo incorporates not only gobies and crustaceans called kura but equally includes eels (nake), which Lio classify as neither mbo nor ika, as well as freshwater crabs separately named as mongga and kojo. On the other hand, the category excludes riparian frogs, although these too are eaten. In this regard, Lio kuza mbo precisely corresponds to the Nage composite kuza tebhu (crustaceans [and] tebhu fish), a somewhat less common alternative to Nage kuza tuna (crustaceans [and] eels), which similarly denotes a utilitarian class comprising several kinds of edible freshwater creatures.

As mentioned, the categories of mbo fish described in Table 2 correspond to the five Nage generics identified as members of the covert folk-intermediate I call the ‘tebhu cluster’. Because Lio and Nage, though related, are different languages, it is not particularly surprising that the names the two groups give to these are quite different. But while the Nage and Lio names are lexically distinct, semantically they reveal a number of interesting correspondences. The details of these are summarized in Table 3.

 

Table 3 Lio and Nage Ichthyological and Nomenclatural equivalents. Note: These identifications supersede those given for Nage categories in Forth 2012.

Identification	Nage name	Gloss	Lio name	Gloss	Comments
Sicyopterus sp.	Ana tebhu or ana bo		Mbo (=mbo boka janga; see Table 2)	Cognate with Nage bo (unanalyzable)
Rhyacichthys aspro	Kaka watu	‘sticks to rocks’	Mata taka	‘adhering face (?)’ (see Table 2)
Belobranchus belobranchus	Tebhu teke	‘Gecko tebhu’, or ‘gecko goby’, so named because of its large head, comparable to a gecko’s	Kia ri’a	‘large head’	Teke denotes large geckoes of the genus Gekko in both Nage and Lio
Awaous sp.	Su lai	‘penetrates, enters sand’	Kose ena	‘fits into, enters sand’
Uncertain (may in part refer to females of Belobranchus belobranchus)	Pusu	‘heart; navel; centre’	Kole kanda	‘placed in a container, basket’	This equivalence is partly inferred by elimination. (Nage have no explanation for pusu as a fish name.)

 

To complete this overview of Lio fish fauna, more should be said about eels. Distinguished from both mbo and ika, several kinds of freshwater eels recognized by Lio are named together asnake ae or simply as nake. Ae is ‘water’. Nake is interesting, as the term has the more general sense of ‘meat’; thus, nake ae might be glossed as ‘water meat’. But while this literal sense may suggest a special importance (or former importance) for eels in the Lio diet, its precise significance is uncertain. Also worth noting is the use of nake in the Ende region, to the west of Lio (thus intervening between Lio and Nage), as a general term for ‘bird’ (Forth 2006), and the use of cognates in Nage and Ngada as a term for ‘meat’ but without simultaneously denoting any particular kind of animal. Having the further meaning of ‘meat’, as the term for ‘eel’ Lio nake might be thought to possess a utilitarian flavour. However, this applies to the name rather than the taxon denoted, as is shown by the Lio identification of several kinds of eels (nake) with names that mostly refer to physical features of the living creatures, and it is further noteworthy that these descriptors all qualify nake, rather than nake ae. Named eel kinds are listed in Table 4. Partly in view of comparative evidence from Nage classification (Forth 2016:216–221), these several kinds can be taken as folk-specifics, with nake (or nake ae) then being interpreted as a folk-generic unaffiliated with any life-form.

 

Table 4Kinds of Eels (Nake or Nake ae).

Lio name	Linguistic notes, description, and identification
Nake or ‘nake biasa’	(Bahasa Indonesia biasa, ‘common’) Anguilla sp., also specified as nake léro. Léro denotes a bright yellow. Accordingly, Lio describe this as a yellow eel with stripes, and also as aggressive (see Figure 1C).
(nake) jai (or jaghi)	Described as a dark-colored eel with long ‘scales’ or ‘spines’ on the back, found especially in the wet season when rivers are in flood. Transcribed as jaghi, the modifier may mean ‘unpleasant tasting’ (Arndt 1933, s.v. jayi).
(nake) nggélu	A light-colored eel. The sense of nggélu in this context is unclear.
(nake) lo léna	A small eel described as possessing a ‘hard body’ and a rounded tail that looks very similar to the head, and as occurring in sand. Lo can mean ‘trunk’; the sense of léna is unclear.
(nake) lawi lolo	A flat-bodied eel, long, and with sharp teeth. Following Arndt (1933, s.v. lawi), the name translates as ‘sorghum leaf’, and may therefore refer to the body shape. (This may be the same eel Nage call hame; Forth 2016:216.)

 

Discussion and Conclusion

Lio naming of the several goby generics under a single label, mbo, supports my previous interpretation (Forth 2012) of ‘the tebhu cluster’ as a covert folk-intermediate in Nage classification. In both cases, the two folk taxa coincide with the scientific taxon Gobioidei (a suborder of the Perciformes). Moreover, this folk taxonomic concordance involves an identical distinction, within the life-form ika, between mbo and ika, the second term in this context denoting, like mbo, a less inclusive folk-intermediate. To be sure, the overall isomorphism of the two classifications contrasts with the designation, in the two languages, of fish-generics included in mbo and the Nage tebhu cluster by lexically quite different names. As shown, however, the names are in several cases semantically similar since in each instance they refer to the same morphological or behavioral features of the fish kinds they identify.

This coincidence raises a question. Can these semantic resemblances and coexistent lexical differences be explained by linguistic relatedness (accompanied by necessary divergence) between Lio and Nage? Or, do resemblance and divergence reflect other factors, more particularly some combination of a common perception of natural discontinuity among different members of the Gobioidei, on the one hand, and of a shared cultural heritage, on the other.

The evidence provides more support for the second interpretation. For if linguistic relatedness were sufficient to explain semantic resemblance between the Nage and Lio terms, one should expect the names to be more similar than they actually are. For example, whereas Lio call Belobranchus belobranchus ‘large head’ (see Table 3), Nage call the same fish ‘Gecko goby’, thus identically focusing on the fish’s relatively large head, which they compare to that of the lizard. But, partly because the same term (teke) denotes large geckoes (Gekko spp.) in both languages, there is no obvious reason why Lio, also, should not have named this fish by reference to the gecko. (Here it should be noted that herpetofauna of the Lio and Nage regions appear not to be significantly different.) To cite another example, Nage ‘sticks to rocks’ (kaka watu) and Lio ‘adhering face’ (mata taka), both alluding to the same behavior and both denoting the Loach goby Rhyacichthys aspro, describe the same distinctive feature of this fish but in quite different ways. And they do so, moreover, even though the Lio name might equally have incorporated watu (the word for ‘rock(s), stone(s)’ in both languages), especially as Lio, too, speak of the species as ‘adhering’ to rocks. Like the presence in both languages of teke, watu, mata, and other identical terms besides, these differences further rule out loan translation (the process whereby speakers of one language adopt a term from another and render it employing their own lexicon⁴) as an explanation for simultaneous semantic resemblances and lexical distinctions between Lio and Nage fish terms. In fact, there is only one name which could suggest a loan translation, that of the fish Lio call kose ena and Nage call su lai, since both names approximately mean ‘enters into sand,’ referring to the species’ characteristic habit of immersing itself into sand at the bottom of rivers and streams (see Table 3). However, in Nage, ‘sand’ is both ena (as it is in Lio) and lai, so had the name been adopted from Lio (kose ena) one would expect the fish to be called ‘su ena.’ Contrariwise, su occurs with much the same meaning in both Lio and Nage, so had Lio adopted the term from Nage, ‘su ena’ (rather than su lai) should be expected as the Nage name.

Before exploring the second, better supported interpretation of concurrent similarities and differences between the Nage and Lio names, it is useful to recall that all distinguish folk-generics. It is further relevant that such generics everywhere—in contrast to taxa at higher and lower levels of classification—constitute biological gestalts, meaning that “exemplars of the category come to mind as a picture of the entire plant or animal” (Berlin 1992:60; Hunn and Brown 2011:326). Thus, folk-generics compose the psychologically most salient and obviously distinct components of any fauna or flora. And insofar as perceiving something as a gestalt may be entailed in an apprehension of living things as possessing singular ‘essences’ (sensu Atran 1990), then folk-generics can be called the most ‘essential’ of taxa.

As well as the inherent discontinuity between the several associated fish kinds, this quality of the folk-generic contributes significantly to an explanation of why, taxonomically and nominally, Nage and Lio distinguish the same fish in similar ways. Yet perceptual factors are not sufficient to account for the semantic similarities among the lexically different names. For the character of these names additionally points to the common possession, by the two ethno-linguistically related but separate groups, of a fundamentally identical conception of the same ichthyological species and genera which, in each instance, involves a selective focus on the same empirical morphological and behavioral features. I should stress that the reference here is to names rather than taxa. Thus, the interpretation does not contradict the characterization of folk-generics as gestalts; rather the selectivity reflected in the names concerns not the entirety of a mental image but part of a process of representation, specifically that part which is concerned with nominally distinguishing folk-generics from similar but in some perceptible ways contrasting generics.

Rather than similar names per se, it is this common representation of the same or similar creatures found in Lio and Nage territory that reflects the shared heritage of the two peoples, and this heritage, moreover, is more broadly cultural rather than simply linguistic. Of course, culture is implicated also in straightforward differences between the two nomenclatures, for example between the Lio name kole kanda and the Nage name pusu (see Table 3), which designate if not the same species then at least members of the same suborder (Gobioidei). To what extent cultural variation might account for the fact that the Nage tebhu cluster comprises just five intermediates whereas the Lio folk-intermediate labeled mbo includes two further fish kinds (mbo bita and mbo kéle te’a)—thus a difference less of naming than of classification—is difficult to say, as the classificatory difference may owe more to regional differences in the occurrence of particular ichthyofauna. Nevertheless, the present analysis has shown how a detailed study of folk classification among ethnolinguistically close yet sufficiently distant populations like Nage and Lio can more precisely reveal the operation of what we usually call ‘culture’, in relation to cognitive, linguistic, and zoological factors (or factors of perceptual salience; Hunn 1999:47–48), in the representation of folk-generic taxa, and the development of folk zoological taxonomies generally.

Notes

¹Interestingly, however, Ika can be used as an avoidance term when speaking of a wife’s mother whose name is Nake. Whereas Nake is a female personal name, Ika is not.

²The informant mentioned three examples, lengor or lenger, peper, and senggilo (a snakehead). Lengor may denote Eliotris fuscus (Verheijen 1967), one of the Gobioidei.

³As discussed elsewhere (Forth 2016:55, 250), Nage ana (child, person, member [of a collectivity]) occurs frequently in Nage names for folk-generics that comprise small animals and especially non-mammals. Lio do not conjoin ana and mbo, nor does ana so commonly occur in other Lio animal names. It is also worth stressing that, whereas Nage ana bo names a folk-generic, Lio mbo designates both a generic and a folk-intermediate.

⁴A familiar example of loan translation is English ‘worldview,’ derived from the semantically similar but lexically mostly different German ‘Weltanschaung.’

Declarations

Permissions: None declared

Sources of funding:Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant (2-13-2017)

Conflicts of Interest:None declared

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