Morphological criterion for distinguishing between abstract and concrete nouns: An experimental approach

Yu.A. Volskaya

Kazan Federal University, Kazan, 420008 Russia

E-mail: kovaleva95julia@mail.ru

Received December 28, 2020

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Full text PDF

DOI: 10.26907/2541-7738.2021.1.119-129

For citation: Volskaya Yu.A. Morphological criterion for distinguishing between abstract and concrete nouns: An experimental approach. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2021, vol. 163, no. 1, pp. 119–129. doi: 10.26907/2541-7738.2021.1.119-129. (In Russian)

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of using a morphological criterion for distinguishing between abstract nouns and other lexico-grammatical categories of the Russian language was studied. The experimental data were obtained as part of the work on compiling an electronic semantic dictionary of Russian abstract nouns with the help of the methodology used to create a similar dictionary for the English language. To date, the dictionary has had 1000 entries, each provided with the abstractness/concreteness index number. During the study, the nouns with the highest degree of abstractness (from 3.5 to 5) were selected. Based on the Large Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by S.A. Kuznetsov and the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by D.N. Ushakov, the plural forms of these nouns and their usage were analyzed. It was revealed that the plural forms of the nouns under consideration can be used in at least one meaning. It was also discovered that the morphological criterion for distinguishing between the lexico-grammatical categories of concreteness/abstractness is not stable and, therefore, turns out to be inapplicable to a number of words.

Keywords: abstract vocabulary, nouns, morphological criterion, database, semantic dictionary

Acknowledgments. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 20-312-90041).

References

1. Naumann D., Frassinelli D., Schulte S. Quantitative semantic variation in the contexts of concrete and abstract words. Proc. 7th Jt. Conf. on Lexical and Computational Semantics, June 5–6, 2018, New Orleans, USA. New Orleans, 2018, pp. 76–85.
2. Solnyshkina M.I., Kisel’nikov A.S. Text complexity: Stages of research in Russian applied linguistics. Vestnik Tomskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Fililogiya, 2015, no. 6, pp. 86–99. (In Russian)
3. Oliveira J., Perea M.V., Ladera V., Gamito P. The roles of word concreteness and cognitive load on interhemispheric processes of recognition. Laterality, 2013, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 203–215. doi: 10.1080/1357650X.2011.649758.
4. Mate J., Allen R.J., Baqués J. What you say matters: Exploring visual–verbal interactions in visual working memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2012, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 395–400. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.644798.
5. Loiselle M., Rouleau I., Nguyen D.K., Dubeau F., Macoir J., Whatmough C., Lepore F., Joubert S. Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in patients with selective anterior temporal lobe resection and in patients with selective amygdalo-hippocampectomy. Neuropsychologia, 2012, vol. 50, no. 5, pp. 630–639. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.12.023.
6. Brysbaert M., Warriner A. B., Kuperman V. Concreteness ratings for 40 thousand generally known English word lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 2014, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 904–911. doi: 10.3758/s13428-013-0403-5.
7. Brysbaert M., Stevens M., De Deyne S., Voorspoels W., Storms G. Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. Acta Psychologica, 2014, vol. 150, pp. 80–84. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.04.010.
8. Xu X., Li J. Concreteness/abstractness ratings for two-character Chinese words in MELD-SCH. PLoS One, 2020, vol. 15, no. 6, art. e0232133, pp. 1–16. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232133.
9. Lahl O., Göritz A.S., Pietrowsky R., Rosenberg J. Using the World-Wide Web to obtain large-scale word norms: 190,212 ratings on a set of 2,654 German nouns. Behavior Research Methods, 2009, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 13–19. doi: 10.3758/BRM.41.1.13.
10. Bonin P., Méot A., Bugaiska A. Concreteness norms for 1,659 French words: Relationships with other psycholinguistic variables and word recognition times. Behavior Research Methods, 2015, vol. 50, no. 6, pp. 2366–2387. doi: 10.3758/s13428-018-1014-y.
11. Montefinese M., Ambrosini E., Fairfield B., Mammarella N. The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian. Behavior Research Methods, 2014, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 887–903. doi: 10.3758/s13428-013-0405-3.
12. Guasch M., Ferré P., Fraga I. Spanish norms for affective and lexico-semantic variables for 1,400 words. Behavior Research Methods, 2016, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 1358–1369. doi: 10.3758/s13428-015-0684-y.
13. Soares A.P., Costa A.S., Machado J., Comesaña M., Oliveira H.M. The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words. Behavior Research Methods, 2017, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 1065–1081. doi: 10.3758/s13428-016-0767-4.
14. Imbir K.K. Affective Norms for 4900 Polish Words Reload (ANPW_R): Assessments for valence, arousal, dominance, origin, significance, concreteness, imageability and, age of acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology, 2016, vol. 7, art. 1081, pp. 1–18. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01081.
15. Ćoso B., Guasch M., Ferré P., Hinojosa J.A. Affective and concreteness norms for 3,022 Croatian words. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2019, vol. 72, no. 9, pp. 2302–2312. doi: 10.1177%2F1747021819834226.
16. Sianipar A., van Groenestijn P., Dijkstra T. Affective meaning, concreteness, and subjective frequency norms for Indonesian words. Frontiers in Psychology, 2016, vol. 7, art. 1907, pp. 1–15. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01907.
17. Solovyev V.D., Ivanov V.V., Akhtiamov R.B. Dictionary of abstract and concrete words of the Russian language: A methodology for creation and application. Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics, 2019, vol. 10, pp. 218–230. doi: 10.22055/rals.2019.14684.
18. Vinogradov V.V. Russkii yazyk (Grammaticheskoe uchenie o slove) [Russian Language (Grammatical Theory of the Word)]. Moscow, Rus. Yaz., 2001. 720 p. (In Russian)
19. Shakhmatov A.A. Ocherk sovremennogo literaurnogo russkogo yazyka [Essay on the Modern Russian Literary Language]. Moscow, Yurait, 2017. 235 p. (In Russian)
20. Shcherba L.V. Izbrannye raboty po russkomu yazyku [Selected Works on the Russian Language]. Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1957. 188 p. (In Russian)
21. Bondarko A.V. Teoriya morfologicheskikh kategorii i aspektologicheskie issledovaniya [Theory of Morphological Categories and Aspectological Studies]. Moscow, Yazyki Slav. Kul’t., 2005. 624 p. (In Russian)
22. Cherneiko L.O. Lingvofilosofskii analiz abstraktnogo imeni [Linguophilosophical Analysis of the Abstract Name]. Moscow, Izd. MGU, 1997. 353 p. (In Russian)
23. Kalinina L.V. On the plural forms of abstract, material, and collective nouns, Russkaya Literatura, 2008, pp. 43–46. (In Russian)

The content is available under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.