Naming action in Japanese: Effects of semantic similarity and grammatical class

Abstract

This study investigated whether the semantic similarity and grammatical class of distracter words affects the naming of pictured actions (verbs) in Japanese. Three experiments used the picture-word interference paradigm with participants naming picturable actions while ignoring distracters. In all three experiments, we manipulated the semantic similarity between distracters and targets (similar vs. dissimilar verbs) and the grammatical class of semantically dissimilar distracters (verbs, verbal nouns, and also nouns in Experiment 3) in addition to task demands (single word naming vs. phrase/sentence generation). While Experiment 1 used visually presented distracters, Experiment 2 and 3 used auditory distracter words to rule out possible confounding factors of orthography (kanji vs. hiragana). We found the same results for all three experiments: robust semantic interference in the absence of any effects of grammatical class. We discuss the lack of grammatical class effects in terms of structural characteristics of the Japanese language.

Notes

¹Alternatively, syntactic information could always be activated, but would only be retrieved when necessary. The behavioural consequences are the same, however.

²Both Terao (1995) and Iwasaki (2000) wrote down errors that they observed (e.g., while participating in conversations or viewing TV programmes).

³Speech errors often contribute to language change, as discussed by Sturtevant (1917); so some Japanese speakers may have started to accept the dative marker -ni for the object NPs of these verbs.

⁴Ishio (1990) used the katakana syllabary, each of which represents a sound, for visual distracter words in her experiment. Although this seems to make the experiment the equivalent of PWI experiments conducted in other languages, the use of katakana is not authentic to most (if not all) of the distracters she used, judging from her example of writing tukue ‘desk’ in katakana. This word is normally written in kanji ( ) or sometimes in hiragana ( ) and Japanese speakers are highly unlikely to have seen the word in katakana form ( ). The novel and unfamiliar writing may have made automatic word recognition difficult; this may explain why significant semantic interference effects did not occur.

⁵Strictly speaking, these citation forms can be considered as full-fledged sentences depending on the context. This is because these forms can be considered to contain tense −u (non-past). However, these are also used as neutral forms – as evidenced in code-switching data in such sentences as ‘Can I nigeru?’ (can I escape) or ‘Don't suu’ (Don't slurp) reported in Nishimura (1997).

⁶Many of the verbal nouns were originally borrowed from Chinese when original Japanese words did not sufficiently express particular meanings. Because of this, many verbal nouns express specific or complex meanings rather than basic, general actions that verbs express. For example, the verb tatu ‘stand’ refers to the general action of standing up, while seemingly similar verbal noun kiritu ‘standing up’ refers to a formal manner of standing up in formal settings such as in a ceremony. Hence, a set of verbs and verbal nouns may be very different in nature even if their English equivalents are similar.

⁷A verbal noun corresponds to either an English noun or verb depending on how it is used. In this case, kioku can either be the equivalent of the English noun ‘memory’ or the verb ‘remember’ depending on whether it is used as a noun (followed by a case-marker) or verb (followed by −suru). In the rest of the paper, including the appendices, we are primarily presenting the English equivalents of the verb interpretation so that non-Japanese speakers can more readily examine the semantic relatedness between the verbal nouns and verb distracters, as this grammatical distinction does not exist in English.

⁸We focused only upon the grammatical class contrast, comparing semantically unrelated verbs and verbal nouns. We did not include semantically related verb distracters in order to avoid the possibility that participants’ responses would be affected by the semantic relation between distracter and target.

⁹Data concerning length of overseas stay was based on 42 participants who reported this information (22 in the citation form task and 20 in the sentence task).

¹⁰Pictures variously included male or female characters performing the actions, so it was necessary to ensure that each subject of each sentence was consistent with the image presented.

¹¹Most participants produced case particle -ga on all trials. A few produced -wa (topic marker) in some instances, but as this was highly consistent behaviour and did not affect naming latencies in any way, these trials were treated the same as -ga trials in all analyses reported.

¹²In Italian, in addition to subject-verb agreement, there can also be object-verb agreement. In sentences in which the object is a pronoun that precedes the verb, the verb agrees with the object (gender and number).