Names of classes of camels according to the function to which they were devoted—milk camel, riding camel, freight camel, marriage camel, slaughter camel, sacrifice camel, etc.
Names of breeds, of different degrees of nobility of lineage, derivation from different lands, etc.
Names of camels in groups, as several, a considerable number, many, innumerable, etc., and with reference to their objectives—grazing, conveying a caravan, a war expedition, etc.
As many as 50 words for pregnant camels, stages of pregnancy, and pregnant behavior, including names for each month of pregnancy, for the stage at which movement of the fetus is first felt, for mothers who suckle and do not suckle their young during pregnancy, for those near delivery, those delivering prematurely, those bearing only once or twice, those bearing foals always living and always dead, those whose foals develop hair in the womb, those feigning or seeming to feign pregnancy, etc.
Names for young camels by years up to the age of ten, for those in various stages of dentition, for those beginning to walk.
Names for physically and mentally peculiar camels—those with large, small, slit, or hanging ears; those differently gaited; those persistently eating thorny or other injurious food; those not drinking until others leave, and those repeatedly returning to drink; those caressing the young with the nose but refusing suck and reserving their milk for some outsider for whom they have a preference.
Names transferred to the camel and its trappings from other objects. Hilal, for example means (1) a full moon, (2) a thin camel, (3) a camel with the brand of a new moon, (4) the moon-shaped iron connecting the two sides of the camel saddle.1
Language thus illustrates the great variety of structures resulting from the different directions taken by the selective attention in the schematization of physiological noises (the definition of the situation); the addition of conceptual elements to a physiological substratum; the perseveration of the initial pattern when the direction of development is once set; and the dependence of linguistic meaning on context, or association with other meanings, to the extent that habit eventually determines meaning.
1 Based on Hammer-Purgstall, S.n/an/an/an/an/a, "Das Kamel," , 6: 1–84.