Subsection Terminologies in Northern Australia: Conceptual and Lexical Diffusion

Abstract

Abstract:Default lexical diffusion involves diffusion of phonological forms and their associated semantics. Subsections are a domain in sociocentric kin classification, whose spread shows full, partial, and null matches between conceptual diffusion and diffusion of terminologies. This offers a rare opportunity to analyze correlations between conceptual and linguistic diffusion. These correlations are modeled using social network theory: partial conceptual diffusion correlates with higher levels of weak ties, whereas partial lexical diffusion correlates with lower levels of weak ties. Subsection terminologies are widely diffused and are therefore Wanderwörter. However, they constitute a distinctive subclass, inasmuch as a lexical domain is diffused, not individual words.