🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.130658.22948@ghost.dsi.unimi.it> leva@ghost.dsi.unimi.it (paolo leva) writes:
>
>I will try to explain WHY we choose to start a new taxonomy from those six
>items. The reason is so simple that it is difficult to make it sound worth
>a scientifical research. If you think of what can be asked about any situation
>that is possible to describe with language, you will find out that you have
>to use one of the wh-words, among those the following six seem to be the most
>essential: WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHERE, and WHEN. We are ignoring the yes/no
>questions as you surely noticed.
>
>The power of this taxonomy (to be developed, of course) is in its intuitive
>power. There is no problem explaining somebody how to recognize a WHO, a WHAT
>and so on. The biggest problem is to convince people trying to approach the
>language from a perspective (apparently) so down to earth.
>

You might be interested in suggestions along this line by Ray
Jackendoff.  See the discussion of "ontological categories" in his
_Semantics and Cognition_ (especially pp. 52-56).

Scott DeLancey                 delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon