Nage Lizard Classification: Free-Listing and Other Evidence for a Covert Life-Form

Speakers of a Central-Malayo-Polynesian language, the Nage of Flores Island, Indonesia, name five folk generic categories of lizards. Ethnographic questioning and observed speech indicate that Nage additionally recognize a more inclusive, but unnamed, taxon glossable as ‘lizard’. Evidence for this taxon has further been generated by a modified form of free-listing. The article analyzes the results of this method, obtained from questioning seventy-two Nage speakers, and discusses the internal structure and taxonomic status of the general ‘lizard’ category. It is concluded that ‘lizard’ is a covert life-form taxon comprising distinctly prototypical and peripheral members and contrasting especially with the overt Nage life-form nipa ‘snake’.