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The semantics of categorization

المؤلف:  Nick Riemer

المصدر:  Introducing Semantics

الجزء والصفحة:  C7-P224

2026-05-20

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The semantics of categorization

Categorization is an important topic in semantics because language can be seen as means of categorizing experience. A word like flower, for example, categorizes an indefinitely large number of different entities in the world as all examples of a single kind of thing, the category FLOWER. The actual types of flower vary widely – think of the difference between a tulip, a carnation and a sunflower – but these differences in no way affect the categorization of all types as flowers. The same is true of other lexical categories. The types of action I might describe by saying I am writing, for example, cover a wide range: filling in a form with a biro, typing on a keyboard, drawing letters in freshly poured concrete with a stick, and sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper with a pen, wondering how to begin a sentence. These outward differences are all glossed over by the verb write, which can be used for all of these activities indifferently. For both linguists and psychologists it is a question of considerable interest how such natural language categories arise. What principles govern what may and may not be categorized under a single word like flower or write? In this section, we explore an answer to this question from the perspective of a conceptualist theory of meaning, which sees the origin of linguistic categories in the nature of human psychology.