Examination of the subjective qualitative aspects of an experience, or “qualia” in short, is a fundamental and core aspect of consciousness research. How can we characterize the particular quality of redness, i.e. a red quale? Based on a recent proposal of the structural characterization of qualia, which did not rely on verbal descriptions, we developed a task that obtained pairwise similarity judgments at four graded levels, with easy and intuitive visual interfaces designed to engage young children. We examined color qualia structures in children (3 to 12-y-old in Japan and 6 to 8-y-old in China) and compared these with those of Japanese adults. Approximately half of the assessed 3-y-old children completed the experiment via our touch panel device version of the task and had reliable responses. Despite known developmental and/or cultural effects of color term usage, we found that color qualia structures were quite similar across the age groups and cultures. Our finding supports the view that color qualia structures emerge early. We also observed age-related differences in the evaluations of some color pairs, which implied subtle changes in the structures behind color experience.

Ever since de Saussure [Course in General Lingustics (Columbia University Press, 1916)], theorists of language have assumed that the relation between form and meaning of words is arbitrary. However, recently, a body of empirical research has established that language is embodied and contains iconicity. Sound symbolism, an intrinsic link language users perceive between word sound and properties of referents, is a representative example of iconicity in language and has offered profound insights into theories of language pertaining to language processing, language acquisition, and evolution. However, on what basis people detect iconicity between sound and meaning has not yet been made clear. One way to address this question is to ask whether one needs to be able to hear sound to detect sound symbolism. Here, it is shown that (1) deaf-and-Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) participants, even those with profound hearing loss, could judge the sound symbolic match between shapes and words at the same level of accuracy as hearing participants do; and (2) restriction of articulatory movements negatively affects DHH individuals' judgments. The results provided support for the articulatory theory of sound symbolism and lead to a possibility that linguistic symbols may have emerged through iconic mappings across different sensory modality—in particular, oral gesture and sensory experience of the world in the case of speech.

To attain native-like proficiency in second-language word usage, learners have to discover intricate semantic categories in the target language. We investigated the factors influencing the development of two aspects of second-language learners’ semantic categories: the category center and category boundary of word meanings. In the experiment, second-language learners of Japanese, whose first language is Mandarin, were asked to produce the best verb for 28 videos depicting various cutting and breaking events. Descriptive analyses were conducted to compare the verb patterns used by second-language learners with those of native speakers. The second-language learners’ verb use pattern suggested their struggle in delineating the semantic ranges of breaking verbs in a native-like manner. Model analyses further revealed that different factors contribute to learning two different aspects of word meanings. The learning category center of word meaning depended on the similarity between the lexical domains in the first and second languages. On the contrary, the success of learning the semantic boundaries of verbs required a large input frequency and smaller semantic coverage, and smaller category ambiguity. The results suggest that constructing a semantic domain in the second language should be evaluated from at least two different aspects of semantic representation.

Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES (under-resourced vs advantaged) might impact color name acquisition of preschool children. The results confirm the findings of previous research, showing that older children labeled the color continuum more accurately than did younger participants. In addition, we found that while SES did not make a difference in how children labeled the continuum using basic color terms (e.g. blue), basic color terms with achromatic modifiers (e.g. light blue), and compound terms (e.g. blueish-green), 5-year-olds from more advantaged economic environments used significantly more non-basic color terms (e.g. turquoise) compared to their counterparts from under-resourced environments. We suggest that, as children hear more non-basic terms, these world-to-word mappings become solidified, and exposure to such labels may contribute to the timing of when children can map those terms to the color continuum.

The distinctions between red and yellow or arm and hand may seem self-evident to English speakers, but they are not: Languages differ in the named distinctions they make. To help understand what constrains word meaning and how variation arises, we examined name choices in English, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese for 36 instances of human locomotion. Naming patterns showed commonalities largely interpretable in terms of perceived physical similarities among the instances. There was no evidence for languages jointly ignoring salient physical distinctions to build meaning on other bases, nor for a shift in the basis of word meanings between parts of the domain of more vs. less importance to everyday life. Overall, the languages differed most notably in how many named distinctions they made, a form of variation that may be linked to linguistic typology. These findings, considered along with naming patterns from other domains, suggest recurring principles of constraint and variation across domains. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.

The meaning of a word is not acquired in isolation from other words. This article investigates how first-language (L1) and adult second-language (L2) learners of Chinese learn the meanings of verbs belonging to the same semantic domain, focusing on the semantic domain of "carrying/holding" in Chinese. Results revealed that the verb use of L2 adults is heavily influenced by their lexical knowledge of L1 and that their development of word meanings stops before they fully reach the adult native speakers' word meaning. L1 children in contrast tend to depend on perceptually visible features of actions at the initial stage of lexical acquisition and then gradually learn how their L1 categorizes the actions by verbs. We argue that L2 learners need to attain meta-knowledge about the mapping of the entire configuration of the corresponding lexical domain between L1 and L2 and discuss how reading inside and outside of the classroom could foster this process. © 2013 Copyright 2013 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.