Language-dependent classification: The mental representation of classifiers in cognition, memory, and ad evaluations.

Abstract

Classifiers are lexico-syntactic structures that are common in Chinese but not in English. In 3 studies, the authors demonstrated that classifiers provide a language-inherent classification of objects (affecting perceived similarity and memory) and, more importantly, guide individuals' judgments in a practically relevant context (e.g., in the evaluation of advertisements). Chinese speaking participants, relative to English speaking participants, judged objects sharing a classifier as more similar than objects not sharing a classifier and were more likely to recall them in clusters. Moreover, objects, presented as consumer products in an advertising context, were evaluated more positively when cued with a visual stimulus that triggers classifierrelated associations. Results are discussed in the context of the recent reformulation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.How individuals classify objects into categories constitutes one of the prime issues in cognitive psychology. Research on categorization in the 1970s adopted primarily an observation-

The cognitive functions of language

“…Taking an overall perspective of Whorf's work, it seems more appropriate to think of him as advocating NL as exercising both a formative influence on speakers' concepts and an ongoing influence in habitual thought. This position is surely consistent with Carruthers's thesis, at least insofar as it applies to the very extensive part of the mind that is said to operate by deploying NL resources; it is also consistent with a considerable body of work in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology that supports the existence of language-specific effects in cognition (e.g., Emmorey 1998;Hunt & Agnoli 1991;Zhang & Schmitt 1998). …”

Do Language-Specific Categories Shape Conceptual Processing? Mandarin Classifier Distinctions Influence Eye Gaze Behavior, but only During Linguistic Processing

“…Our similarity-rating pre-tests and Saalbach and Imai (2007) have demonstrated that although Mandarin speakers are sensitive to similarities between objects sharing a classifier, even Dutch and German speakers are attuned to this likeness, suggesting that classifiers are picking up on perceptual/conceptual resemblances already present between objects. Studies such as Zhang and Schmitt's (1998) are also potentially problematic in the dependent measures they use. Participants are typically asked for explicit judgments, such as similarity judgments or word-picture matching, but similarity judgments are known to be particularly prone to strategic biases (Goldstone, 1994).…”

“…Mandarin speakers appear to be exquisitely sensitive to classifier categories in a variety of situations, including inductive reasoning, making preference judgments, remembering objects and judging object similarity (e.g., Schmitt and Zhang, 1998;Zhang and Schmitt, 1998;Saalbach and Imai, 2007). For example, Zhang and Schmitt asked whether objects that take the classifier ba3 for "graspable objects" would become more associated with "graspableness", such that speakers direct attention to this property, even outside the linguistic realm.…”

Classifier effects on human categorization: the role of shape classifiers in Mandarin Chinese

“…Considerable research on the relationship between language and cognition has focused on the impact that classifier languages have on categorization (Lucy 1992;Imai and Gentner 1997;Zhang and Schmitt 1998;Schmitt and Zhang 1998). Classifier languages are languages that group nouns into classes on the basis of some characteristic of the referents of the nouns (Allan 1977).…”