Imageability of Norwegian nouns, verbs and adjectives in a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract

In this article, we present a study of imageability ratings for a set of 1599 Norwegian words (896 nouns, 483 verbs and 220 adjectives) from a web-based survey. To a large extent, the results are in accordance with previous studies of other languages: high imageability scores in general, higher imageability scores for nouns than for verbs, and an inverse relation between frequency and imageability. A more surprising finding is the low imageability of low-frequency verbs. Also, imageability ratings increase systematically and significantly with informant age, reminding us that conceptual learning continues and changes throughout life. This has consequences for our expectations of different linguistic skills in a life span perspective. These findings have an obvious clinical relevance both for choice of items in test construction, for evaluation of performance in clinical groups and for development of therapy material.

Keywords:

• cognitive-linguistics
• language processing
• database
• frequency
• age

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all the informants who took part in the survey, both for the pilot study and for the final assessment; Thomas Nygreen for technical assistance with the web survey design; Anders Nøklestad for help with establishing token frequencies; participants at ICPLA 14 for comments and discussion at the oral presentation of this article; and Kristian E. Kristoffersen and Inger Moen for valuable comments on the manuscript.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no declarations of interest.