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A cross-linguistic comparison of Spanish and English semantic norms: Looking at core features

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2020

Jorge Vivas Open the ORCID record for Jorge Vivas [Opens in a new window] ,
Boris Kogan Open the ORCID record for Boris Kogan [Opens in a new window] ,
Sofía Romanelli ,
Francisco Lizarralde  and
Luis Corda
Jorge Vivas*
Affiliation:
National University of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Boris Kogan
Affiliation:
National University of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and National Agency of Scientific and Technological Promotion, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sofía Romanelli
Affiliation:
National University of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Francisco Lizarralde
Affiliation:
National University of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Luis Corda
Affiliation:
National University of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jvivas@mdp.edu.ar
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Abstract

It has been suggested that human communities that share their basic cultural foundations evince no remarkable differences concerning the characterization of core concepts. However, the small but existing differences among them reflect their sociocultural diversity. This study compares 219 concrete concepts common to both Spanish and English semantic feature norms in order to assess whether core features of concepts follow a universal or cultural language-specific pattern. Concepts were compared through a geometric technique of vector comparison in the Euclidean n-dimensional space alongside the calculation of the network’s degree of centrality. The role of cognate status was also explored by repeating the former analysis separating cognate from noncognate words. Taken together, our data show that languages are structurally similar independent of the cognate status of words, further suggesting that there are some sort of core features common to both languages.

Keywords

comparisonconceptual representationcore featurescross-linguisticfeature norms
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 285 - 297
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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