Folk-taxonomies in Early English

This linguistic study delves into the cognitive structures of Old and Middle English, exploring how speakers organized their world through semantic fields like color, plants, and animals. Anderson meticulously analyzes how these folk-taxonomies imposed order on human experience, contrasting the limited basic color terms of early English with the more extensive vocabulary of modern languages. The work provides a fascinating window into the Anglo-Saxon and medieval mind, revealing a worldview fundamentally shaped by its own unique linguistic categories.

Readers with a serious interest in historical linguistics, anthropology, or cognitive science will find this an indispensable resource. Anderson's scholarly approach connects the dots between language, culture, and perception, offering a compelling argument for why these archaic classification systems matter. It’s a dense but rewarding read that permanently alters how one thinks about the relationship between words and the world they describe.