Wisniewski E J, Imai M, Casey L
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2710, USA.
Cognition. 1996 Sep;60(3):269-98. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(96)00707-x.
Psychological studies of superordinates have generally treated them as equivalent. However, many languages distinguish mass superordinates (e.g., clothing) from count superordinates (e.g., vehicle). In the present paper, experimental evidence is presented which suggests that the two types of superordinates are conceptually distinct as well. One study showed that the members of mass superordinates more often co-occur. A second study showed that people more often interact with the members of mass superordinates in temporal proximity whereas people primarily interact with single members of count superordinates on a specific occasion. Also, properties that characterize an individual are a more salient aspect of count superordinates. These findings imply that mass superordinates refer to unindividuated groups of objects, united by spatial and functional contiguity. Two other studies supported this hypothesis by showing that the class inclusion relation between a single object and a category is stronger for count superordinates. Taken together, the findings suggest that mass superordinates are not true taxonomic categories. We relate the findings to previous views of superordinates and to the count/mass distinction in general.
对上位词的心理学研究通常将它们视为等同的。然而，许多语言区分物质上位词（如“衣物”）和可数上位词（如“车辆”）。在本文中，给出了实验证据，表明这两种类型的上位词在概念上也是不同的。一项研究表明，物质上位词的成员更常同时出现。第二项研究表明，人们在时间上更常与物质上位词的成员相互作用，而人们在特定场合主要与可数上位词的单个成员相互作用。此外，表征个体的属性是可数上位词更突出的一个方面。这些发现意味着物质上位词指的是由空间和功能上的邻近性联合起来的未个体化的物体组。另外两项研究通过表明单个物体与一个类别之间的类包含关系对可数上位词更强，支持了这一假设。综合来看，这些发现表明物质上位词不是真正的分类学类别。我们将这些发现与之前关于上位词的观点以及一般的可数/物质区分联系起来。
