Knowing versus naming: Similarity and the linguistic categorization of artifacts - Malt et al 1999
How associated are similarity and linguistic categorization?
Previous work suggest some parallels but also some disassociations.
Previous work found that we judge similarity by perceptual features but name categories using more functional features (Rips 1989)
Chaining(Lakoff 1987): Similarity between a named object and it’s nearest neighbor in similarity space may determine linguistic categorization. This allows objects that are different from category exemplars to be members of the category if there is a salient chain of other category members that are more similar.
Convention: Certain objects may retain linguistic categories that defy perceptual similarity with other categories based on linguistic history. Could arise from chains that are no longer apparent.
Pre-emption: A linguistic category may be used to pre empt ambiguity with another salient category even if the other category is in the same region of similarity space. (Clark)
“Although perceived similarity and naming show a positive relation, this relation is far from perfect and factors other than similarity must contribute to naming choices.”
What if linguistic naming tasks also took into account dissimilarity along with similarity?
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