Ordering of taboo adjectives

Conceptualizing Adjectives Conceptualizing Adjectives Conceptualizing Adjectives

We specify a model for the conceptual interpretation of relative adjectives (like \big"), which covers a crucial aspect of the underlying comprehension process { the comparison to a norm that is associated with a comparison class. Building on an elaborate domain ontology and knowledge about intercorrelations, comparison classes are dynamically created depending on the context in which adjectiva...

Dutch taboo norms

This article provides norms for general taboo, personal taboo, insult, valence, and arousal for 672 Dutch words, including 202 taboo words. Norms were collected using a 7-point Likert scale and based on ratings by psychology students from the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The sample consisted of 87 psychology students (58 females, 29 males). We obtained high reliability based...

Nouns as Adjectives and Adjectives as Nouns

Many languages have morphological devices to turn a noun into an adjective. Often this morphology is genuinely derivational in that it adds a semantic predicate such as ‘havingN’ (proprietive), ‘lacking-N’ (caritive’), ‘similar-to-N’ (similitudinal) and so on. In other cases the denominal adjective expresses some vaguely defined notion of possession as in Russian Ivan-ovo (detstvo) ‘Ivan’s (chi...

The last taboo?

Processing Neutral , Emotion and Taboo

Bilinguals have reported that they have a stronger emotional experience in their native language (L1) than in their second language (L2). Behavioral studies are inconclusive about this question. However, studies that used skin conductance levels as a dependent variable are clearer about this effect: participants elicit a stronger skin conductance response on emotional and taboo words in L1 comp...