433 Chapter Seven Cosmos For the Matsigenka of Shimaa, kameti ...

This system of classification conveys useful information about resource zones. For
example, some birds walk on the forest floor (saaviku), meaning they can be caught in certain
kinds of traps, whereas others live among the branches (enoku “up” or oshiku “in the leaves”),
requiring different traps. As Werner Wilbert has pointed out, such a classificatory system
groups animals according to the spaces they occupy, a kind of de facto recognition of plant and
animal associations (W. Wilbert 1992: 71; 1995). As Wilbert interprets this aspect of
cosmology, it is not the descent of species that matters, but their “balanced complementary
diversity” within the natural (and spiritual) world. Such a classification groups biotic
communities rather than a Linnean tree of genetic relatives.
In conversation Machiguengas explore details that generate cross-cutting classifications.
Different monkeys prefer different fruits, seeds or leaves, traces of their aboreal feeding littering
the ground below. Some fish can be caught with fishhooks, others cannot. Some animals are
dangerous (koveenkaripage) or eat people (sekatantacharira). Matsigenkas know all sorts of
behavioral details about the animals around them, and any of these details is liable to be used in
describing any particular one. Shepard (1995b) explores many forms of noun classification that
also result in partial or cross-cutting typologies of animal life.
Some patterns of classification, however, do come up frequently in conversation. In
Matsigenka, one does not ask directly, “What kind of x is y?” (e.g., “what kind of bird is a
dove?”). Two other questions have to serve instead: first, tiara ipaita “What is it called?” and
second, “Is x a y?” (e.g., shiromega inti kanari “Is dove a ‘guan’?”). The “What is it called?”
frame usually elicits the specific name of an animal. But sometimes I found that it was eliciting
cover terms, which are more common for animals than they are for plants. A few of them have
450