The Influence of Geometrical and Nongeometrical Features on the Use of the Lexical Concepts NEAR and FAR in English and Finnish |
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| Authors: | Emile van der Zee Karen Adams Jussi Niemi |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Psychology, University of Lincoln , Lincoln, United Kingdom;2. Department of Foreign Languages and Translation Studies , University of Joensuu , Finland |
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| Abstract: | Abstract This paper investigates the impact of geometrical and nongeometrical features on the use of the lexical concepts NEAR and FAR in English and Finnish. Participants' acceptability ratings for these concepts demonstrate that a bar in between a Figure and a Ground acts as a scale-setting object but not as a distance enhancing barrier, shows that the influence of the geometrical feature Figure–Ground distance exceeds the influence of several nongeometrical features, but most of all reveals that language specific lexical properties associated with NEAR and FAR predict language dependent effects for functional relatedness in interaction with Figure–Ground distance and bar presence. |
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| Keywords: | spatial language lexical representation distance functional features grammar |
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