Winter, Bodo, Perlman, Marcus and Majid, Asifa orcid.org/0000-0003-0132-216X (2018) Vision dominates in perceptual language:English sensory vocabulary is optimized for usage. Cognition. pp. 213-220. ISSN 0010-0277
Abstract
Researchers have suggested that the vocabularies of languages are oriented towards the communicative needs of language users. Here, we provide evidence demonstrating that the higher frequency of visual words in a large variety of English corpora is reflected in greater lexical differentiation-a greater number of unique words-for the visual domain in the English lexicon. In comparison, sensory modalities that are less frequently talked about, particularly taste and smell, show less lexical differentiation. In addition, we show that even though sensory language can be expected to change across historical time and between contexts of use (e.g., spoken language versus fiction), the pattern of visual dominance is a stable property of the English language. Thus, we show that across the board, precisely those semantic domains that are more frequently talked about are also more lexically differentiated, for perceptual experiences. This correlation between type and token frequencies suggests that the sensory lexicon of English is geared towards communicative efficiency.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Journal Article |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 15 Oct 2018 13:00 |
Last Modified: | 10 Mar 2025 00:06 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.05.008 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.05.008 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:137149 |
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