Principles of Categorization

Description

Статья. Опубликована в сборнике Rosch E., Lloyd B.B. (eds.) Cognition and Categorization - Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. - 1978. - P. 27- 48.SUMMARYThe first part of this chapter showed how the same principles of categorizationcould account for the taxonomic structure of a category system organized arounda basic level and also for the formation of the categories that occur within thisbasic level. Thus the principles described accounted for both the vertical andhorizontal structure of category systems. Four converging operations wereemployed to establish the claim that the basic level provides the cornerstone ofa taxonomy. The section on prototypes distinguished the empirical evidencefor prototypes as structural facts about categories from the possible role of pro-totypes in cognitive processing, representation, and learning. Then we consideredassumptions about the nature of the attributes of real-world objects and assump-tions about context - insofar as attributes and contexts underlie the claim thatthere is structure in the world. Finally, a highly tentative pilot study of attributesand functions of objects as props in culturally defined events was presented.