Concrete Nouns Research Articles

A conceptual perspective of the evolution of Spanishfrentefrom body part to locative/spatial concept and beyond

AbstractThe Spanish wordfrente(O.Sp.fruente<Lat.frōns), meaning ‘forehead’, has changed gradually over time to be incorporated into a wide variety of modern forms that convey locative meanings and spatial relations as well as personal qualities. The purpose of the current study is to determine approximately when these new forms incorporatingfrentedeveloped, the mechanisms for these various changes, and the cognitive ramifications of such developments. A total of 725 tokens offrentefrom works of fiction spanning three time periods (1200–1450; 1451–1750; 1751–2000) are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively according to collocation, meaning, and syntactic phrase. Each of these analyses, when viewed holistically, shows that the original source lexeme has largely decategorialized as a noun and has been abstracted of its locative/spatial characteristics to be gradually incorporated into prepositional and adverbial forms. It is shown that, conceptually, prepositions profile spatial relations between a trajector and a landmark whereas adverbs profile the location of a trajector alone. These grammatical uses offrenteas well as other even more abstract uses denoting personal qualities have developed over time due to cognitive processes such as abstraction, synecdoche, metaphor, and inference. Cases such as the evolution offrentefrom concrete noun to uses in locative/spatial forms as well as forms with even more abstract meanings give further justification for the need of a linguistic model that is cognitive-based.

Age-related Changes in Word Defining Abilities in Concrete and Abstract Nouns with Normal Elderly

본 연구는 일반노년층을 대상으로 단어정의하기 과제를 실시하여, 노화에 따른 구체명사와 추상명사의 단어정의하기 능력 변화를 살펴보았다. 대상자는 55~64세, 65~74세, 75~84세, 85세 이상의 네 개 연령집단으로 분류된 총 382명의 일반노인들이었다. 5개의 구체명사와 5개의 추상명사로 구성된 단어정의하기 과제를 실시하여, 단어정의 점수, 주요의미/부수의미의 개수 및 비율, 오류유형을 분석하였다. 연구 결과 구체명사의 정의점수, 주요의미/부수의미의 개수 및 비율은 네 집단 간 차이가 모두 유의하였다. 추상명사의 경우, 높은 연령집단인 75~84세와 85세 이상 집단 간 차이를 제외한 모든 연령집단 간 차이가 통계적으로 유의하였다. 오류의 산출빈도는 85세 이상 집단에서 급격한 증가를 보였으며 오류유형의 산출비율은 55~64세, 65~74세 집단에서 개인적 경험 오류, 75~84세 집단에서 목표어휘 반복 오류, 85세 이상 집단에서 무반응 오류가 가장 높았다. 이러한 결과는 구체명사와 추상명사 모두 노화가 진행됨에 따라 의미망 내에서의 어휘 및 의미자질들의 확산적 활성화가 제한되어 주요의미와 부수의미의 개수가 감소하고 이로 인해 단어에 대한 정의 내용 또한 빈약해진다는 것을 의미한다. 또한 연령이 높은 집단일수록 의미망 내에서 목표어휘와 가까운 거리에 있는 주요의미의 비율이 증가하였다. 본 연구는 다양한 연령대의 노인집단을 대상으로 단어정의하기 능력을 살펴보아, 노화에 따른 언어능력 특성을 제시하였다는 점에 의의가 있다.The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of defining concrete and abstract nouns for the elderly. A total of 382 elderly participated in this study and they were classified into four age groups (i.e., over 55 to under 64, over 65 to under 74, over 75 to under 84, and over 85 year-old group). They performed the word definition task, composed of five concrete and five abstract nouns. The total scores and numbers and ratio of core/supplementary meanings were compared among four elderly groups. The frequency and ratio of error types were also examined. The results showed that all four groups had statistically significant differences in total scores, numbers and ratio of core and supplementary meaning of concrete noun definition task. In addition, abstract noun definition performances revealed group differences except the two groups (over 75 to under 84 and over 85-year-old group). The oldest group showed a sharp increase in error production. The highest ratio of error types were personal experience in over 55 to under 64-year-old group, and over 65 to under 74 year-old groups; and for the target word repetition in over 75 to under 84 year-old group; and no response in over 85 year-old group. In conclusion, both concrete and abstract word defining abilities had age-related deterioration. This decline results from impairment in spreading semantic knowledge within semantic network, which is vulnerable to aging. Characteristics of word definition for elderly can provide basic information to understand various neurolinguistic disorders associated with age.

Two Types of Verbs Created with Concrete Nouns

Two Types of Verbs Created with Concrete Nouns

A Shift from Spectator to Creator: A Study of Blog Writing in a Print and Photo High School Class

This article is a study of written blog texts from 12 third grade high school students produced during the course of one school year, commenting on their own photos and artwork as part of their curriculum in the discipline Print and Photo. Analysis of the texts show that there is a clear tendency to reduce the constructions with forms of to be from the beginning towards the end of the school year, whereas constructions with forms of to have increase in the same time span. This is detailed by analyzing one of the students’ texts, finding a shift from predominantly descriptive accounts of the images to using language to positioning themselves as active participants with focus on the process of composition. Examining the distribution of abstract versus concrete nouns in the same texts shows that the frequency of abstracts nouns stays the same whereas there is a reduced frequency of concrete nouns during the school year. These findings suggest a development in language into a particular kind of abstraction where their photos are increasingly discussed in terms of how they compose the images rather than describing the elements that are in the photos – a development resembling a shift in position from spectators to creators.

Mind the generation gap: Differences between young and old in everyday lexical categories

Abstract Considerable stability of the meanings associated with concrete nouns is arguably important for their effective use. On the other hand, variability is observed across time, individuals, and communicative contexts. This study examined the balance between stability and flexibility in meanings of common, basic level artifact nouns by evaluating speaker differences in their use as a function of age, education, and gender. Diverse samples of monolingual Dutch- (N ≈ 400) and French-speaking (N ≈ 300) Belgian adults made lexical category judgments for pictures of storage containers. Mixture IRT-analyses revealed the presence of latent groups of categorizers related to age but not gender or education in each language. In both languages, older adults relied more on traditional materials such as glass or cardboard in their judgments, whereas younger adults emphasized relatively new materials such as plastics. This generational difference demonstrates how elements of word meaning can shift over the short-term, linking individual to larger scale variation and providing the foundation for meaning evolution over time.

Are Emotions Abstract or Concrete?

The ability to identify and communicate emotions is essential to psychological well-being. Yet research focusing exclusively on emotion concepts has been limited. This study examined nouns that represent emotions (e.g., pleasure, guilt) in comparison to nouns that represent abstract (e.g., wisdom, failure) and concrete entities (e.g., flower, coffin). Twenty-five healthy participants completed a lexical decision task. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that emotion nouns elicited less pronounced N400 than both abstract and concrete nouns. Further, N400 amplitude differences between emotion and concrete nouns were evident in both hemispheres, whereas the differences between emotion and abstract nouns had a left-lateralized distribution. These findings suggest representational distinctions, possibly in both verbal and imagery systems, between emotion concepts versus other concepts, implications of which for theories of affect representations and for research on affect disorders merit further investigation.

학령기 경도지적장애아동의 단어의미제시조건에 따른 보통명사와 추상명사 단어 의미 추론

학령기 경도지적장애아동의 단어의미제시조건에 따른 보통명사와 추상명사 단어 의미 추론

Recently learned foreign abstract and concrete nouns are represented in distinct cortical networks similar to the native language.

In the native language, abstract and concrete nouns are represented in distinct areas of the cerebral cortex. Currently, it is unknown whether this is also the case for abstract and concrete nouns of a foreign language. Here, we taught adult native speakers of German 45 abstract and 45 concrete nouns of a foreign language. After learning the nouns for 5 days, participants performed a vocabulary translation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Translating abstract nouns in contrast to concrete nouns elicited responses in regions that are also responsive to abstract nouns in the native language: the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle and superior temporal gyri. Concrete nouns elicited larger responses in the angular gyri bilaterally and the left parahippocampal gyrus than abstract nouns. The cluster in the left angular gyrus showed psychophysiological interaction (PPI) with the left lingual gyrus. The left parahippocampal gyrus showed PPI with the posterior cingulate cortex. Similar regions have been previously found for concrete nouns in the native language. The results reveal similarities in the cortical representation of foreign language nouns with the representation of native language nouns that already occur after 5 days of vocabulary learning. Furthermore, we showed that verbal and enriched learning methods were equally suitable to teach foreign abstract and concrete nouns. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4398-4412, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

DICKENSIAN STYLE IN CHRISTMAS BOOKS

Charles Dickens, the author of novels, novellas, stories and essays, was highly concerned with the social issues of 19thcentury Victorian period. His writing style is marked with linguistic and artistic creativity, which provided him a label: Dickensian style. The striking common traits of Dickens’s works are repetitions and parallelism in lexical level; deviations and variations in narration; a combination of imagination with reality; fragmentations united within the flow of the action; detailed depiction of setting and characters; the repeated concrete nouns to subordinate abstract meaning; variation in characterization and experimentation with varied themes related to the deficiencies of his time. Many of these common traits of ‘Dickensian’ style are vividly observed in the five short Christmas stories in Christmas Books. Stylistic and linguistic variants of the stories lead to conclude that Dickens preferred certain stylistic markers and linguistic codes for his artistic goal: to attract the readers’ attention for social issues of Industrial Age of Victorian period via the use of certain lexis and syntactical patterns. The combination of his world-view and his artistic literary style manifest Dickens’s style, which can vividly be observed by his readers in Christmas Books. The scope of this analysis contains the application of a linguistic study for a literary purpose and the study involves the analysis of lexical categories determined by G. Leech and M. Short in Style in Fiction (1981).

Modality-independent encoding of individual concepts in the left parietal cortex

The organization of semantic information in the brain has been mainly explored through category-based models, on the assumption that categories broadly reflect the organization of conceptual knowledge. However, the analysis of concepts as individual entities, rather than as items belonging to distinct superordinate categories, may represent a significant advancement in the comprehension of how conceptual knowledge is encoded in the human brain.Here, we studied the individual representation of thirty concrete nouns from six different categories, across different sensory modalities (i.e., auditory and visual) and groups (i.e., sighted and congenitally blind individuals) in a core hub of the semantic network, the left angular gyrus, and in its neighboring regions within the lateral parietal cortex. Four models based on either perceptual or semantic features at different levels of complexity (i.e., low- or high-level) were used to predict fMRI brain activity using representational similarity encoding analysis. When controlling for the superordinate component, high-level models based on semantic and shape information led to significant encoding accuracies in the intraparietal sulcus only. This region is involved in feature binding and combination of concepts across multiple sensory modalities, suggesting its role in high-level representation of conceptual knowledge. Moreover, when the information regarding superordinate categories is retained, a large extent of parietal cortex is engaged. This result indicates the need to control for the coarse-level categorial organization when performing studies on higher-level processes related to the retrieval of semantic information.

Unspeakable motion: Selective action-verb impairments in Parkinson’s disease patients without mild cognitive impairment

Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients show marked impairments in processing action verbs, and to a lesser extent, concrete (specially, manipulable) nouns. However, it is still unclear to what extent deficits in each of these categories are influenced by more general cognitive dysfunctions, and whether they are modulated by the words’ implied motility. To examine these issues, we evaluated 49 non-demented PD patients and 49 healthy volunteers in an oral production task. The patients were divided into two groups depending on the presence or absence of mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI and PD-nMCI, respectively). Participants named pictures of actions varying in motion content (low and high) and of objects varying in manipulability (low and high). The PD-MCI group showed deficits across all four categories. However, PD-nMCI patients exhibited a selective difficulty for high-motion action verbs. This finding corroborates and refines previous results suggesting that disturbances of action-related lexico-semantic information in PD constitute a sui generis alteration manifested early in the course of the disease’s physiopathology. Moreover, it suggests that the grounding of action verbs on motor circuits could depend on fine-grained intracategorical semantic distinctions.

Flashcards and Guided Visual Vocabulary Practice: Experiences of Students With Learning Disabilities When Introduced to Concrete Spanish Nouns

Successful inclusion of students with learning disabilities in foreign language courses has been problematic, likely due to factors such as heightened anxiety and individualized learning challenges which are characteristic of those with learning disabilities. These learning characteristics often necessitate that multisensory strategies be employed to support students with learning disabilities in academic content areas; prior research has suggested that such strategies contribute to successful completion of foreign language coursework for struggling learners. Accordingly, an initial study investigated the impact of an explicit, multisensory strategy called Guided Visual Vocabulary Practice (GVVP) in recalling English translations of concrete Spanish nouns. Progress of participants (n = 8) with GVVP was compared to performance with traditional flashcards in a single-subject, reversal design spanning a 10-week period. Student performance was assessed by tabulating the number of thematically grouped Spanish nouns correctly translated when presented orally from randomized lists. The findings indicated a moderate effect size (0.54) overall, but the largest impact with GVVP occurred among the three middle school participants included in the sample. An analysis of different aspects of the Spanish vocabulary words (cognates, number of syllables, initial letters) may have correlated with student performance is included, as are implications for future research and instructional practice. Subscribe to LDMJ

An Algorithm to Evaluate Appropriateness of Still Images for Learning Concrete Nouns of a New Foreign Language

An Algorithm to Evaluate Appropriateness of Still Images for Learning Concrete Nouns of a New Foreign Language

Feature-Specific Event-Related Potential Effects to Action- and Sound-Related Verbs during Visual Word Recognition.

Grounded cognition theories suggest that conceptual representations essentially depend on modality-specific sensory and motor systems. Feature-specific brain activation across different feature types such as action or audition has been intensively investigated in nouns, while feature-specific conceptual category differences in verbs mainly focused on body part specific effects. The present work aimed at assessing whether feature-specific event-related potential (ERP) differences between action and sound concepts, as previously observed in nouns, can also be found within the word class of verbs. In Experiment 1, participants were visually presented with carefully matched sound and action verbs within a lexical decision task, which provides implicit access to word meaning and minimizes strategic access to semantic word features. Experiment 2 tested whether pre-activating the verb concept in a context phase, in which the verb is presented with a related context noun, modulates subsequent feature-specific action vs. sound verb processing within the lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, ERP analyses revealed a differential ERP polarity pattern for action and sound verbs at parietal and central electrodes similar to previous results in nouns. Pre-activation of the meaning of verbs in the preceding context phase in Experiment 2 resulted in a polarity-reversal of feature-specific ERP effects in the lexical decision task compared with Experiment 1. This parallels analogous earlier findings for primed action and sound related nouns. In line with grounded cognitions theories, our ERP study provides evidence for a differential processing of action and sound verbs similar to earlier observation for concrete nouns. Although the localizational value of ERPs must be viewed with caution, our results indicate that the meaning of verbs is linked to different neural circuits depending on conceptual feature relevance.

Crime Investigations: The Countability Profile of a Delinquent Noun

This paper aims to broaden our understanding of countability beyond what is found with concrete nouns, providing a one-word case study of the countable and non-countable uses of the noun crime. I show that the behavior of crime runs counter to a variety of expectations inherited from the literature on countability: its countable use cannot be directly grounded in atomic acts or events, nor is its non- countable use simply equivalent to a plural individual composed of individual crimes, as one might expect on analogy with certain analyses of furniture. Additionally, while crime has a use as a bare plural, that use does not refer to a kind. A quantitative study supports these conclusions. Altogether, crime demonstrates a novel noun type with respect to its nominal semantics and countability behavior, which is also an indication of the large empirical terrain that awaits exploration for eventive and abstract nouns.

Dissociable substrates underlie the production of abstract and concrete nouns

Dissociable substrates underlie the production of abstract and concrete nouns

Reading words hurts: the impact of pain sensitivity on people’s ratings of pain-related words

abstractThis study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like ‘syringe’, ‘wound’, ‘knife’, and ‘cactus’ are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. These findings dovetail with recent studies suggesting that certain bodily characteristics influence the way people form mental representations (Casasanto, 2009). We discuss three mechanisms which could potentially account for our findings: attention and memory bias, prototype analysis, and embodied cognition. We argue that, whereas none of these three accounts can be ruled out, the embodied cognition hypothesis provides a particularly promising view to accommodate our data.

A Study on Metaphoricity of Duck across Word Classes with Wmatrix and BNCweb Combined — Implications for Learning of Polysemous Words

This paper combines Wmatrix with BNCweb to look at the grammar of linguistic metaphors formed by concrete nouns and their derivatives across word classes in order to shed light on learning of polysemous words. The methodology is to search different word classes of such a noun in BNCweb, use the concordances to construct corpus data and upload the data to Wmatrix for semantic domain tagging, choose the self-contained corpus in Wmatrix — British English 2006 — for a reference corpus to do the frequency comparison, then study the resultant key semantic tags as clues to identify the source domains of metaphor. The underlying idea of Cognitive Metaphor Theory, the Great Chain of Being and the semantic makeup of a concept will help with the identification of a metaphor. The case study on duck shows the detailed process and feasibility of the research method. The research results reveal how different meanings of a concrete noun are related by metaphor or metonymy, which facilitates the learning of polysemous words.

ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION OF KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN AND THE ACCURACY OF THEIR TRANSLATION

The variation of English vocabulary acquisitions and the accuracy of translation made by kindergarten children are the main goal of this research. Data were collected from the results of the student’s task based on the teacher lessons. In each task, the teachers presents five pictures, there are two correct picture answers. The answer shows the ability of the children to catch the meaning of the vocabulary. The teachers also presents five words and one correct word answer to show the ability of the children to transfer a word meaning. This research is aimed to observe how children in the kindergarten acquire English acquisition process as the second language. In conducting the research, the datum were analyzed based on its acquisition steps related to mother tongue and parthership in study at home. The interpretation leads to describe the english vocabulary acquisition of kindergarten children and the accuracy of their translation. The results show that there are four types of steps of acquisition – correct, overgeneralization, simplification and incorrect. The survey research show that any relation between one factor to the others influence English vocabulary for kindergarten children and accuracy of their translation. Kindergarten children can easier codify concrete noun that is familiar in their lives than other types of noun. Keywords: vocabulary acquisition, kindergarten, children, accuracy, translation

The Development of Concrete and Abstract Noun Definitions in 4 to 6 Year-Old Children

The Development of Concrete and Abstract Noun Definitions in 4 to 6 Year-Old Children