[Sigia-l] graded categories?

[Donna]

OK, so here's some examples, off the top of my head, of graded 
categories:

- Vegetarian
- Mother (this is a Lakoff example)
- Tall man (this is a Lakoff example too)
- Bachelor (this too)
- Shopping centre
- Family
- Holiday
- Bird
- Comedy

Each of these has a different reason for being graded, most 
because there are prototypical and less prototypical members. Tall 
man is because of fuzzy boundaries. I think bachelor is because of 
an idealised cognitive model. There are other reasons, which I 
can't remember off top of my head and because it makes my brain 
hurt too much!

Donna


On Sun Mar 05 17:11:40 PST 2006, Eric Scheid 
<eric.scheid at ironclad.net.au> wrote:

> 
> Wild dogs are mostly carnivores, but they will eat grass if they 
> are feeling
> unwell. Domesticated dogs get fed lots of vegetables and grains 
> in their
> diet, and so I would think would be classed as omnivores.
> 
> See, this is an example of gradation, but it's not a great 
> example because
> it goes counter to common thought. What's an example of a graded 
> category
> where even non-linguisticians go "oh, yeah, that's graded" (but 
> in their own
> words ;-)
> 
> A classic example of graded categories might be colours: red, 
> green, blue.
> There's literally a spectrum of gradation in there, and most lay 
> people
> would understand that.
> 
> e.
>