BALEE & MOORE: SIMILARITY AND VARIATION IN PLANT NAMES 215

full vs. partial nasalization, exact quality of labial vs. bilabial fricatives, and
vowel/glide distinctions.
 One standardized orthography is used for the five languages. Stress falls
on the last syllable in As, K, T, and W unless otherwise indicated; stress in Ar
and As is irregular and has been indicated for each word (1).
 Morpheme-by-morpheme glosses are given for maximum opportunity to
confirm or counteranalyze our results and to use the data for other purposes.
Glosses for the most part are supplied by Bal6e, except for W words, the
glosses for which come from Grenand (1980). Many suggestions on glossing
and advice on transcription were supplied by A.D. Rodrigues, based on sources
unavailable to us. Word boundaries are undetermined.


 Method of Comparison


 Measuring similarity and variation of vocabulary between related
languages is different from the procedures of historical linguistics--
reconstruction using the comparative method. This paper asks the question,
given a botanical species, what are the words for it in various languages of the
same family and are these words similar or different? This reflects well the
common sense notion of what is meant by similarity and can be quantified in a
straightforward way. In diachronic linguistics, on the other hand, one searches
for cognate terms showing systematic sound correspondences, allowing, if
necessary, a considerable degree of semantic 'shift' of the referent. There is no
concern with determining non-cognacy, which is difficult with incomplete
collections and without knowledge of the full range of meaning of each word.
 In order to determine whether words in two languages are similar or
different it is necessary to specify a comparable range of meaning for them
(such as the biological species) to prevent problems of overlapping (see Alcorn
1984:270). Consider, for example, the Ka'apor and Temb6 names for 'jarana'
and 'cacador,' which are two species in the Brazil nut family:



 K T

 Lecythis cf. chartacea Berg iwiri-l' iwiri-'iw

 Lecythis idatimon Aubl. yali-amir iwiri-'iw-pit&