Embodiment and modality exclusivity of Chinese verbs

Abstract

This thesis presents an original data set in the form of embodiment, imageabil­ity, and modality exclusivity norms for verbs in written Chinese. The verbs were extracted from a comprehensive corpus of Chinese, and ratings were collected for both simplified and traditional characters from Chinese speakers in mainland China and Taiwan. The norms are investigated to establish if there is any connection be­tween specific verb type POS categories taken from the corpus and the levels of bodily association and imageabilty from the norming task. Chinese radicals are also analysed for their connection to embodiment and modality associations. Anal­ysis and validation is carried out on the data set in the form of a lexical decision task and comparisons with two other large data sets of Chinese lexical variables in order to establish if highly embodied or highly exclusive verbs in Chinese are responded to and recalled faster than less embodied words. The findings show that embodiment does have a facilitative effect on identification of verbs, and that high imageability and embodiment is associated with greater exclusivity.