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The categorisation system

المؤلف:  Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green

المصدر:  Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction

الجزء والصفحة:  C8-P256

2025-12-27

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The categorisation system

These two principles give rise to the human categorisation system. While the principle of cognitive economy has implications for the level of detail or level of inclusiveness with which categories are formed, the principle of correlational structure has implications for the representativeness or prototype structure of the categories formed (Rosch 1977, 1978). Rosch (1978) suggests that this gives rise to a categorisation system that has two dimensions: a horizontal and a vertical dimension. This idea is represented in Figure 8.1.

The vertical dimension relates to the level of inclusiveness of a particular category: the higher up the vertical axis a particular category is, the more inclusive it is. Consider the category DOG in Figure 8.1. Relative to this category, the category MAMMAL is higher up the vertical axis and includes more members than the category DOG. The category MAMMAL is therefore more inclusive than the category DOG. The category COLLIE, however, is lower on the vertical axis and has fewer members; this category is less inclusive than the category DOG. In contrast, the horizontal dimension relates to the category distinctions at the same level of inclusiveness. Hence, while DOG and CAR are distinct categories, they operate at the same level of detail. In the next two subsections, we look in more detail at the evidence for these two dimensions of categorisation.