MACLAURY, Robert E (Pennsylvania)
VANTAGES IN A WORD FIELD: VARIABLY DISTRIBUTED ATTENTION TO SIMILARITY

Named categories constitute a word field that is comparable cross-linguistically when they are of the same domain. Munsell measurement reveals languages that name color with an equal number of basic terms but assign different widths to their ranges, which suggests variable distribution of attention to similarity. The vantage model of categorization sums the balance of attention to similarity and difference across a set number of categories and apportions a fraction to any single category. The latter varies between languages and within a language, although it does not decrease below a threshold of shared core meaning. Vantage theory injects into word-field modeling the active agency of individuals and specifies mathematically the thought they hold in common. The model stipulates how they assert this thought, maintain it, change it, and occasionally upset it. Distributed cognition is projected by a person and shared by people, who construct it by a method that only humans employ--effectively or defectively. Viewing word fields in this way helps us to understand more about them.