What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words
A well-known method of studying iconic words is through the collection of subjective ratings. We collected such ratings regarding familiarity, iconicity, imagery/imageability, concreteness, sensory experience rating (SER), valence and arousal for Mandarin ABB words. This is a type of phrasal compoun...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press
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| Series: | Language and Cognition |
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| Online Access: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S186698082400022X/type/journal_article |
| _version_ | 1797194240485228544 |
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| author | Thomas Van Hoey Xiaoyu Yu Tung-Le Pan Youngah Do |
| author_facet | Thomas Van Hoey Xiaoyu Yu Tung-Le Pan Youngah Do |
| author_sort | Thomas Van Hoey |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | A well-known method of studying iconic words is through the collection of subjective ratings. We collected such ratings regarding familiarity, iconicity, imagery/imageability, concreteness, sensory experience rating (SER), valence and arousal for Mandarin ABB words. This is a type of phrasal compound consisting of a prosaic syllable A and a reduplicated BB part, resulting in a vivid phrasal compound, for example, wù-mángmáng 雾茫茫 ‘completely foggy’. The correlations between the newly collected ABB ratings are contrasted with two other sets of prosaic word ratings, demonstrating that variables that characterize ABB words in an absolute sense may not play a distinctive role when contrasted with other types of words. Next, we provide another angle for looking at ABB words, by investigating to what degree rating data converges with corpus data. By far, the variable that characterizes ABB items consistently throughout these case studies is their high score for imageability, showing that they are indeed rightfully characterized as vivid. Methodologically, we show that it pays off to not take rating data at face value but to contrast it with other comparable datasets of a different phenomenon or data about the same phenomenon compiled in an ontologically different manner. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T05:53:08Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-31386b9dbdd64488bd2aa8cc355e7d8d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1866-9808 1866-9859 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T05:53:08Z |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Language and Cognition |
| spelling | doaj.art-31386b9dbdd64488bd2aa8cc355e7d8d2024-04-23T09:51:45ZengCambridge University PressLanguage and Cognition1866-98081866-985912310.1017/langcog.2024.22What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB wordsThomas Van Hoey0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5226-9752Xiaoyu Yu1https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8088-8912Tung-Le Pan2https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8673-6309Youngah Do3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1926-2230Department of Linguistics, KU Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumDepartment of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR of ChinaGraduate Institute of Linguistics, National Taiwan University, TaiwanDepartment of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR of ChinaA well-known method of studying iconic words is through the collection of subjective ratings. We collected such ratings regarding familiarity, iconicity, imagery/imageability, concreteness, sensory experience rating (SER), valence and arousal for Mandarin ABB words. This is a type of phrasal compound consisting of a prosaic syllable A and a reduplicated BB part, resulting in a vivid phrasal compound, for example, wù-mángmáng 雾茫茫 ‘completely foggy’. The correlations between the newly collected ABB ratings are contrasted with two other sets of prosaic word ratings, demonstrating that variables that characterize ABB words in an absolute sense may not play a distinctive role when contrasted with other types of words. Next, we provide another angle for looking at ABB words, by investigating to what degree rating data converges with corpus data. By far, the variable that characterizes ABB items consistently throughout these case studies is their high score for imageability, showing that they are indeed rightfully characterized as vivid. Methodologically, we show that it pays off to not take rating data at face value but to contrast it with other comparable datasets of a different phenomenon or data about the same phenomenon compiled in an ontologically different manner.https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S186698082400022X/type/journal_articleABBcorpusideophoneiconicityimagerynormsratingsvividness |
| spellingShingle | Thomas Van Hoey Xiaoyu Yu Tung-Le Pan Youngah Do What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words Language and Cognition ABB corpus ideophone iconicity imagery norms ratings vividness |
| title | What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words |
| title_full | What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words |
| title_fullStr | What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words |
| title_full_unstemmed | What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words |
| title_short | What ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of Mandarin ABB words |
| title_sort | what ratings and corpus data reveal about the vividness of mandarin abb words |
| topic | ABB corpus ideophone iconicity imagery norms ratings vividness |
| url | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S186698082400022X/type/journal_article |
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