Mental lexicon and culture

Interesting data on mental lexicon has come from cross-cultural studies in colour categories. Some cultures have terms for a wide variety of colours. In Western Europe there is diversity from “magenta” to “sky-blue”. Other cultures have very few terms. "Blue" and "greed" tend to become merged together with increasing proximity to the equator. In extreme cases one word is used to name "black", "blue" and "green". In Papua New Guinea there are only two colour terms for black and white to show all the diversity of colours around (Eysenck, M. and M. Keane. 1997. Cognitive Psychology. Psychological Press. P. 243). There is an interesting hierarchy of using the colour terms in languages. If a language has two basic colour terms available, they must correspond to "black and white". The next colour will be "red" etc. A hierarchy of colours is shown below:

	Black	White
			Red
Yellow	Green	Blue
			Brown
Purple	Pink	Orange	Grey

(Harley, T. 1997. The Psychology of Language. Psychology Press. P. 344-345). "Colours" have proved to be the most fruitful way to investigate the "strong version" of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis about “language relativity” claiming that languages influence the way people perceive the world. Other lexical areas (e.g. number of words for "snow" in Eskimo language have proved to be less fruitful as Eskimo has only two words for snow: "snow on the ground" and "snow in the air" (Harley, T. 1997. P. 341).

Exploratory task 1.6

Find the equivalents to the given words in your native tongue

English words	Your native equivalents
A. Slush
B. Sleet
C. Efficiency
D. Meal
E. Barbecue

Word polysemy in mental lexiconis a typical feature of the words stored in memory. Word polysemy it represented by homophones with a variety of assigned meanings.

Exploratory task 1.7

Complete the following sentences and comment on the polysemy of the word “bank”

	Fisherman	The fisherman put his catch in the …
	Businessman	The businessman put his money in the …
Bank
	Rivalry	I will not … on it

Word compounds in mental lexiconare phrasal verbs, adjectival collocations and other word combinations. Phrasal words are illustrated by the following example specially created for the demonstration purpose: Every time I try to talk up a new idea to my boss, he talks down to me, or talks around the issue. I can talk back to him but fail to talk him into anything. We can talk over and out (no words are left) the problem but here is no way to talk him round (make him change his mind). So we are just talking away (wasting time) I talk up (raise my voice) but we never come to talking through (consider the matter thoroughly). Word collocations can have connections between co-ordinatesi.e. words that have a semantic relationship between them. E.g. fever – yellow, finger – green, mood – black, blood – red, colour – deep etc.

Exploratory task 1.8

With many adjectives you can use the word “very”. There are lots of other words with a similar meaning, which are more precise as parts of collocations. E.g. highly qualified, bitterly disappointed. Add a word, which means “very” to each of the following words

Very, highly, severely	Adjective
1. Severely 2. Highly 3. Very	a) Exhausted b) Handicapped c) Unexpected d) Recommended e) Greedy f) Sceptical g) Grateful

(Data from The LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations. Exercises and Activities for the Classroom. 1999. P.6))

Exploratory task 1.9

Combine the words in the left column with the words in the right column

Handsome, pretty, charming, lovely

Woman, man, child, dog, bird, flower, weather, bed, picture, dress, present, voice, landscape, view, house, furniture

(After Jordan, R. 1997. English for Academic Purposes. CUP. P. 156)

Adjectival compounds (collocations)abound in English and have become a feature of written and otherwise formal English. They have entered dictionaries and have become widespread (Ross, N. 1997. Double-barrelled adjectives. Modern English Teacher. Vol. 6. No. 3. P. 11-18).

Exploratory task 1.10