Abstract
Lexical availability measures the ease with which a word can be generated as a member of a given category. It has been developed by linguistic studies aimed, among other things, at devising a rational basis for selecting words for inclusion in dictionaries. The measure accounts for the number of people who generated a given word as a member of a designated semantic category and the position in which they produce the word. We present an analysis of lexical availability from a cognitive perspective. Data were analysed for Spanish speakers generating words from five semantic categories-clothes, furniture, body parts, animals, and intelligence. Six properties of words were investigated as potential predictors of lexical availability. Predictors were concept familiarity, typicality, imageability, age of acquisition, word frequency, and word length. Categories differed on these variables, and regression analysis found concept familiarity, typicality, and age of acquisition to be significant predictors of lexical availability. The cognitive basis of these findings and the practical consequences of selecting words on the basis of lexical availability are considered.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 730-755 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sep 2006 |
Keywords
- OF-ACQUISITION RATINGS
- WORD-FREQUENCY
- SEMANTIC MEMORY
- CONTEXT AVAILABILITY
- VANDERWART PICTURES
- SPEECH PRODUCTION
- CATEGORY NORMS
- CONCRETE WORDS
- NAMING LATENCY
- NAME AGREEMENT