Cognitive linguistics,

1. Abstract
The current study aims to assess the existing relationship between collocations and mental storage of lexicons. Word association test has been
applied to demonstrate the aforementioned relationship. In this test, investigating the first word which comes to a listener’s mind, after hearing a
vocabulary, is of considerable importance. To achieve the goal of the research, 20 subjective and objective vocabularies have been distributed
between 100 B. A. students (male and female). Then, relationships between all lexical stimuli and responses have been appraised. The obtained
findings indicate that lexical storage systems of different people have some features in common. Moreover, lexical sense relations can stimulate
the listeners’ minds to remember some signs from their long-term memory. In this study, the signs have been categorized into different groups
and it has been concluded that there is no big difference between responses of objective and subjective stimuli.
Keywords: sense relation, objective lexicons, subjective lexicons, lexical storage system, word association test
Introduction
Psycholinguistics is a science which
examines the relationship between language
and mind. In fact, psycholinguistics is the
knowledge of comprehension, production, and
acquisition of language.
Psycholinguists have proposed some ideas
apropos of lexical relations and models of
comprehension, storage and retrieval. Modular
model is one of the suggested models, and
word association test is an approach of storage
and access to the lexicons of the same field.
Word Association Test
Word association test is one of the oldest tests
of mental function which has been applied by
psychologists to assess lexical sense relations.
Word association means stimulation of an
associative pattern by a word. It has been
invented by Sir Francis Galton who thought
there might be a link between a person’s
intelligence quotient and word associations.
In a typical word association test, researchers
try to find the existing relationships between
words. They ask different subjects to respond
to a stimulus word with the first word that
comes to mind.
The first word coming to mind is of more
importance than other words, since they may
be affected by the second word; mention must
be made though that the first word which
comes to mind cannot be also a perfect tool of
measurement, because no one’s mind is empty
of presuppositions and backgrounds. But
considering the achieved results of word
association test, we can compare a
participant’s answers and obtain some useful
findings.
The findings of word association tests can
clarify different aspects of human minds.
Participants’ answers can be categorized in the
following manner: 1. answers which are on the
paradigmatic axis such as oppositions,
hyponyms, and omnibus words 2. answers
which can be considered on syntagmatic axis 3.
harmonic words such as use and abuse, or
normal and formal
ssssss
A Cognitive Study of Sense Relations of Objective and
Subjective Lexicons Based on Lexical Association Test
Seyyed Mohsen Asghari Nekah, PhD Assistant Professor of Education and Psychology of Exceptional Children
Faculty of educational sciences and psychology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad , Mashhad, Iran.
Elahm Akhlaghi, Phd candidate Dept. of Linguistics, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
Shima Ebrahimi, MA Dept. of Linguistics, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
Results and Conclusion
Collocations are closely associated with
semantics and lexicography, mind, and
cognitive sciences. The widespread
researches in this field can be an indicative of
its significance. The findings of different
researches demonstrate that only individual
vocabulary’s meaning cannot determine a
collocation, so there are some other effective
criteria in determining lexical collocations and
linguistics cannot impose restrictions on
them, although they are going to be fixed by
the high frequency of their application in
different works. The obtained findings
indicate that lexical storage systems of
different people have some features in
common. Moreover, lexical sense relations
can stimulate the listeners’ minds to
remember some signs from their long-term
memory.
According to what mentioned before, the
meaning of words is the determining factor in
all collocations and a word is often collocated
with the words which have something in
common with it. When collocating two words
we should consider semantic relations of
each individual word to avoid damaging the
rationalization behind the criteria in making
expressions.
It has been concluded that there is no big
difference between responses of objective
and subjective stimuli and lexical storage
system is strongly dependent upon sense
relations. In addition, these sense relations
are not fixed and constant; therefore,
language speakers can radically alter them on
the basis of their mental conceptions.
Review of literature
According to Sinopalnikova (2003), the
simplest experimental technique to reveal
the association mechanism is a free
association test (FAT). In FATs, a list of
words (stimuli) is presented to subjects
(either written or orally), which are asked
to respond with the first word that comes
into their mind (responses), and FAT
gives the broadest information on the way
knowledge is structured in the human
mind. The results of FAT series reported
in a form of tables, was given the name
Word Association Norms (WAN). Word
Association Thesaurus (WAT) is a more
developed form of WAN because it
includes several thousands of stimuli.
One of the most striking results of word
association studies was summarized by
him as follows: second language learners
produce associations that are much more
diverse and unstable; often their
responses are based on purely
phonological, rather than semantic, links
with the stimulus words (ibid: 358).
“Word Association Test”, which was
invented by F. Galton, was widely used in
psychology by psychiatrists such as C.
Jung, G. H. Kent and A. J. Rosanoff. Kent
& Rosanoff’s study was the first large
scale study which was carried out in
English with 1,000 men and women. They
used 100 probe words and read one word
at a time to a person who was to give the
first word that came into his/her mind.
After analysing the data, they claimed that
there was uniformity in the organization
of associations and people shared stable
networks of connections among words.
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Method
The present study has been administered
to test 60 words (15 abstract and 45
concrete words) which have been given to
60 participants (30 male and 30 female
students, between 19 and 22 years old).
The participants have been asked to write
just the first word coming to their mind in
at most five minutes.
Due to the large number of words and
participants’ tiredness, the last 10 or 20
unanswered items have not been
considered. 55 words have been content
words and 15 ones have been function
words (two conjunctions, two interrogative
words, one degree adverb and one time
adverb).
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful