The Leopard's spots : essays on language, cognition, and culture / by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Preface; Abbreviations; List of Tables, Maps and Figures; Chapter 1 By Way of Introduction ; Part 1 Language Ecology ; Chapter 2 Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent ; 2.1 The Genetic Classification of African Languages: A Brief State of the Art ; 2.2 Accretion Zones, Spread Zones, and Their Ecological Bases ; 2.3 Esoterogeny, Metatypy and Other Miracles of Language Contact; Chapter 3 Accretion Zones and the Absence of Language Union in the Nuba Mountains ; 3.1 Genetic Diversity ; 3.2 Typological Diversity ; 3.2.1 Phonology ; 3.2.2 Lexical Diffusion.

3.2.3 Morphological Diversity3.2.4 Clause Structure; 3.3 A Natural Refugium Zone; Chapter 4 Esoterogeny and Localist Strategies in a Nuba Mountain Community ; 4.1 Introduction ; 4.2 Internal Variation in Tima and the "Apparent-time" Approach ; 4.3 An Initial Comparison with Katla; 4.4 Metatypy, Esoterogeny, or Neither?; 4.5 Localist Strategies; Part 2 Language and Co-Evolution ; Chapter 5 Some Observations on Evolutionary Concepts in Current Linguistics ; 5.1 Evolutionary Concepts and the Study of Language: Some Earlier Attempts ; 5.2 A Closer Look at the Brown and Witkowski Hypothesis.

5.2.1 The Historical-Comparative Evidence and Counter-Evidence5.2.2 The Empirical Basis: Synchronic Evidence and Counterevidence; 5.3 An Alternative Account: Language and Cognition; 5.4 Conclusions and Prospects; Chapter 6 Studying Lexical-Semantic Fields in Languages: Nature Versus Nurture, or Where Does Culture Come into It These Days? ; 6.1 Investigating the Interaction between Language and Cognition: Research on Colour Terminology ; 6.2 Language Typology and the Study of Language Universals; 6.3 The Berlin and Kay Framework; 6.4 Some Problems with the Berlin and Kay Model.

6.5 Extending the Greenbergian Framework to Other Lexical Domains6.6 The Expression of Space and Direction in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective ; 6.7 The Problem of the "Radical Translator"; 6.8 Implicational Scales and Historical Reconstruction; 6.9 Some New Evidence for Linguistic Relativity?; 6.10 Some Final Observations; Chapter 7 Lexical-Semantic Fields in Tima ; 7.1 Introduction; 7.2 Bio-nomenclature; 7.3 Colour; 7.4 Shape and Texture; 7.5 Taste; 7.6 Body Parts; Part 3 Conversational Styles ; Chapter 8 Colourful PSI's Sleep Furiously: Depicting Emotional States in Some African Languages.

8.1 Introduction8.2 Categories and Event Structures; 8.3 A Closer Look at Two African Language Families: Nilotic and Bantu; 8.4 Interpreting Colourful PSI's; 8.5 On PSI's and FTA's; Chapter 9 Perception of the Living Dead and the Invisible Hand in Teso-Turkana ; 9.1 Introduction; 9.2 Invisible Forces in Teso-Turkana; 9.3 Perception of the Invisible Hand; 9.4 A Note on Perception Verbs in a Nilotic Context; Chapter 10 Conversational Styles in Tima ; 10.1 Introduction; 10.2 Ideophones; 10.3 Emotional States; 10.4 Exoteric and Esoteric Languages; References; Language Index; Subject Index.

In this volume, Gerrit J. Dimmendaal discusses the interaction between language, cognition, and culture in an African context with special focus on the cultural construction of meaning through language.

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