Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T01:19:55.423Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Meaningless words promote meaningful categorization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2014

GARY LUPYAN  and
DANIEL CASASANTO
GARY LUPYAN*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
DANIEL CASASANTO
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago
*
*Address for correspondence: Gary Lupyan, 1202 W. Johnson St. Rm. 419, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706. email: lupyan@wisc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

On traditional accounts, word meanings are entries in a mental lexicon. Nonsense words lack such entries, and are therefore meaningless. Here, we show that under some circumstances nonsense words function indistinguishably from conventional words. The ‘nonsense’ words foove and crelch led participants to select systematically different clusters of adjectives and were reliably matched to different species of alien creatures (e.g., ‘crelches’ were pointy and narrow and ‘fooves’ were large and fat). In a categorization task in which participants learned to group two species of aliens primarily on the basis of roundness/pointiness, these novel labels facilitated performance as much as conventional words (e.g., round, pointy). The results expand the scope of research on sound symbolism and support a non-traditional view of word meaning according to which words do not have meanings by virtue of a conventionalized form−meaning pairing. Rather, the ‘meaning’ of a word is the effect that the word form has on the user’s mental activity.

Keywords

category learningsound symbolismiconicitymental lexicon
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 167 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

references

Aveyard, M. (2012). Some consonants sound curvy: effects of sound symbolism on object recognition. Memory & Cognition, 40 (1), 83–92.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59 (4), 390–412.Google Scholar
Bloom, P., & Keil, F. C. (2001). Thinking through language. Mind & Language, 16 (4), 351–367.Google Scholar
Cabrera, A., & Billman, D. (1996). Language-driven concept learning: deciphering Jabberwocky. Journal of Experimental Psychology—Learning Memory and Cognition, 22 (2), 539–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, L. (2010 [1871]). Through the looking glass and what Alice found there. London: Penguin Books Limited.Google Scholar
Casasanto, D., & Lupyan, G. (in press). All concepts are ad hoc concepts. In Margolis, E. & Laurence, S. (Eds.), Concepts: new directions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1983). Making sense of nonce sense. In d’Arcais, G. B. F. & Jarvella, R. J. (Eds.), The process of language understanding (pp. 297–331). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dilkina, K., McClelland, J. L., & Plaut, D. C. (2010). Are there mental lexicons? The role of semantics in lexical decision. Brain Research, 1365, 66–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dingemanse, M. (2011). Ezra Pound among the Mawu: ideophones and iconicity in Siwu. In Michelucci, P.Fischer, O., & Ljungberg, C. (Eds.), Semblance and signification (pp. 39–54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Edmiston, P., & Lupyan, G. (2013). Verbal and nonverbal cues activate concepts differently, at different times. In Knauff, M.Pauen, M.Sebanz, N., & Wachsmuth, I. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2243–2248). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Elman, J. L. (2004). An alternative view of the mental lexicon. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (7), 301–306.Google Scholar
Elman, J. L. (2009). On the meaning of words and dinosaur bones: lexical knowledge without a lexicon. Cognitive Science, 33 (4), 547–582.Google Scholar
Elman, J. L. (2011). Lexical knowledge without a lexicon? The Mental Lexicon, 6 (1), 1–33.Google Scholar
Evans, V. (2009). How words mean lexical concepts, cognitive models, and meaning construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, V. (forthcoming). The language myth: uncovering the true nature of language, mind and being human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gauthier, I., James, T. W., Curby, K. M., & Tarr, M. J. (2003). The influence of conceptual knowledge on visual discrimination. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20 (3-6), 507–523.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imai, M., Kita, S., Nagumo, M., & Okada, H. (2008). Sound symbolism facilitates early verb learning. Cognition, 109 (1), 54–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jackendoff, R. S. (2002). Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, and evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59 (4), 434–446.Google Scholar
James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology, Vol. 1. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. A., & Goldberg, A. E. (2013). Evidence for automatic accessing of constructional meaning: Jabberwocky sentences prime associated verbs. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28 (10), 1439–1452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kantartzis, K., Imai, M., & Kita, S. (2011). Japanese sound‐symbolism facilitates word learning in English‐speaking children. Cognitive Science, 35 (3), 575–586.Google Scholar
Kohler, W. (1947). Gestalt psychology: an introduction to new concepts in modern psychology. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Kovic, V., Plunkett, K., & Westermann, G. (2010). The shape of words in the brain. Cognition, 114 (1), 19–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kunkler-Peck, A. J., & Turvey, M. T. (2000). Hearing shape. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 26 (1), 279–294.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, J., & Gentner, D. (2005). Relational language and the development of relational mapping. Cognitive Psychology, 50 (4), 315–353.Google Scholar
Ludwig, V. U., Adachi, I., & Matsuzawa, T. (2011). Visuoauditory mappings between high luminance and high pitch are shared by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (51), 20661–20665.Google Scholar
Lupyan, G. (2008). From chair to ‘chair’: a representational shift account of object labeling effects on memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137 (2), 348–369.Google Scholar
Lupyan, G. (2012). What do words do? Towards a theory of language-augmented thought. In Ross, B. H. (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 57, pp. 255–297). Academic Press. Online: <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123942937000078>.Google Scholar
Lupyan, G., Rakison, D. H., & McClelland, J. L. (2007). Language is not just for talking: labels facilitate learning of novel categories. Psychological Science, 18 (12), 1077–1082.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupyan, G., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2012). The evocative power of words: activation of concepts by verbal and nonverbal means. Journal of Experimental Psychology—General, 141 (1), 170–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maurer, D., Pathman, T., & Mondloch, C. J. (2006). The shape of boubas: sound−shape correspondences in toddlers and adults. Developmental Science, 9 (3), 316–322.Google Scholar
Monaghan, P., Christiansen, M. H., & Fitneva, S. A. (2011). The arbitrariness of the sign: learning advantages from the structure of the vocabulary. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 140 (3), 325–347.Google Scholar
Monaghan, P., Mattock, K., & Walker, P. (2012). The role of sound symbolism in language learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38 (5), 1152–1164.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, J. B. (1999). The case for sound symbolism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28, 225–252.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, J. B. (2010). The sound-symbolic expression of animacy in Amazonian Ecuador. Diversity, 2 (3), 353–369.Google Scholar
Nygaard, L. C., Cook, A. E., & Namy, L. L. (2009). Sound to meaning correspondences facilitate word learning. Cognition, 112 (1), 181–186.Google Scholar
Ozturk, O., Krehm, M., & Vouloumanos, A. (2013). Sound symbolism in infancy: evidence for sound−shape cross-modal correspondences in 4-month-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 114 (2), 173–186.Google Scholar
Parise, C., & Spence, C. (2012). Audiovisual crossmodal correspondences and sound symbolism: a study using the implicit association test. Experimental Brain Research, 220 (3), 319–333.Google Scholar
Perniss, P., Thompson, R. L., & Vigliocco, G. (2010). Iconicity as a general property of language: evidence from spoken and signed languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 1. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perry, L. K., & Lupyan, G. (in press). The role of language in multi-dimensional categorization: evidence from transcranial direct current stimulation and exposure to verbal labels. Brain and Language.Google Scholar
Pullum, G. K. (1989). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 7 (2), 275–281.Google Scholar
Ramachandran, V. S., & Hubbard, E. M. (2001). Synaesthesia–a window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8 (12), 3–34.Google Scholar
Rastle, K., Harrington, J., & Coltheart, M. (2002). 358,534 nonwords: the ARC - nonword database. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 55 (4), 1339–1362.Google Scholar
Shintel, H., & Nusbaum, H. C. (2007). The sound of motion in spoken language: visual information conveyed by acoustic properties of speech. Cognition, 105 (3), 681–690.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snedeker, J., & Gleitman, L. (2004). Why is it hard to label our concepts? In Hall, D. G. & Waxman, S. R. (Eds.), Weaving a lexicon (illustrated edition., pp. 257–294). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: a tutorial review. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 73 (4), 971–995.Google Scholar
Taylor, J. R. (2012). The mental corpus: how language is represented in the mind. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, P. D., & Estes, Z. (2011). Sound symbolic naming of novel objects is a graded function. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64 (12), 2392–2404.Google Scholar
Westbury, C. (2005). Implicit sound symbolism in lexical access: evidence from an interference task. Brain and Language, 93 (1), 10–19.Google Scholar
Winter, B. (2013). Linear models and linear mixed effects models in R with linguistic applications. arXiv:1308.5499 [cs]. Online:<http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.5499>..>Google Scholar