BALEE & MOORE: SIMILARITY AND VARIATION IN PLANT NAMES 257

 DISCUSSION


 The above results are generally in accord with Berlin et al.'s (1973)
pioneering hypothesis that cultural importance influences the retention of plant
names in sister languages:

 Degree of Cultural Importance Degree of Retention

But our results suggest that this process can be further elucidated by
recognizing as analytical variables (1) the degree of plant management
(domesticated, semi-domesticated, non-domesticated); (2) a widespread
nomenclatural pattern among these languages, in which words for traditional
domesticates tend to be literal, words for non-domesticates tend to be
metaphorical, and words for semi-domesticates tend to lie between these
extremes; and 3) the much higher stability of literal, as opposed to
metaphorical, plant names. In this model, the types of names which the
nomenclatural pattern assigns to domesticates strongly tend to be literal, the
types assigned to semi-domesticates show an increasing proportion of
metaphorical terms, and the majority of those assigned to non-domesticates
are metaphorical. For some reason, literal terms are more stable over time
and hence are more apt to be similar from language to language. That is, to
answer the question posed in the beginning, cultural factors of plant
management and the plant naming system combine with the linguistic
properties of names and diachronic linguistic processes to produce similarity
and variation in plant vocabulary:

(1) SYNCHRONIC FACTORS:

Degree of Plant Management + Nomenclatural System Proportion
of Literal/Metaphorical Terms

(2) DIACHRONIC PROCESSES:

Differential Retention of Literal/Metaphorical Terms -- Similarity
and Variation of Terms

 In spite of the somewhat different methods, the results of Berlin et al.
 (1973) are consistent with ours. Although we cannot say whether metaphorical
 names are proportionally more represented in the "wild" vs. "protected" and
 "cultivated" categories of Berlin et al. (1973), since non-cognates and their
 glosses in these categories are not shown, it is possible to indicate what
 proportion of the cognates is literal and what proportion is metaphorical and in