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Article published In:
The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 13:1 (2018) ► pp.105–142

Discrete dimension accessibility in multidimensional concepts

The noun-adjective distinction

| The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
| Bar-Ilan University
| University of Cologne

Previous studies have identified that conceptual categories corresponding to nouns exhibit semantic domain effects: (1) classification into biological ones reflects a non-additive consideration of their defining dimensions whereas classification into artefactual and, presumably, social nouns is based on an additive one (2) nominal biological concepts are less graded than artifacts. Nevertheless, much uncertainty exists about the structure of conceptual categories corresponding to multidimensional adjectives. We propose that the effects observed for concepts corresponding to nouns are connected to a property we term discrete dimension accessibility and ask how it is manifested in multidimensional concepts corresponding to adjectives. We then hypothesize that (a) ratings of dimension-counting structures can be used as a diagnostic for these properties (b) the dimensions of multidimensional concepts corresponding to adjectives are inherently discrete. We report an acceptability rating experiment involving 42 adult Hebrew speakers revealing that with nouns, dimension-counting constructions with artefactual and social predicates are rated higher than ones with biological predicates, hence confirming (a). With adjectives, ratings for dimension-counting constructions remained high across the domain manipulation, hence confirming (b). We argue that the interaction between discrete dimension accessibility and lexical category indicates that lexical distinctions interact with conceptual ones.

Keywords: conceptual categories, lexical category, adjectives, nouns
Article outline
  • Category classification and dimensions
  • Domain effects on classification
  • Nouns and adjectives
  • The noun/adjective distinction and discrete dimension accessibility
  • Are adjectival dimensions inherently discrete?
  • Current study
  • Experiment
    • Participants
    • Methods
      • Materials
        • Pretest: Copula inclusion
      • Design and procedure
    • Results
      • The overall model
      • Predicate type × Domain × Structure
        • Structure and domain in nouns
        • Structure and domain in adjectives
      • Control items
      • Do artefactual and social categories pattern the same?
  • Discussion
    • Implications for models of lexical categorization
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.17011.fad
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