Toward a database of classification systems Semantic descriptions and analyses

Classification, which could be defined as “a mental operation that causes an object or a multitude of objects to fall under a concept X” (Seiler, 1986), is linguistically expressed in many languages of the world, from Mandarin, Japanese or Burmese to languages of the Bantu or Amerindian families. It also appears in writing systems, for example in the ancient cuneiform, Mayan or hieroglyphic scripts. Although scholars disagree on the exact scope of this phenomenon, and the terms that should be used to refer to its various expressions – classifiers, semantic determinatives etc., these disagreements are partly due to the separate histories of since long established scholastic traditions, while “cross-field” investigations clearly point to the existence of common underlying cognitive and linguistic strategies.