Loanword perception vs. native word perception

Methods

The following experiments are planned to investigate differences in connotations between words, for both the synonyms and the variants under inspection.

a. Free associations

Free associations (both words and phrases) with loanwords and their synonyms or assimilated forms will be obtained. Frequencies of associations will be compared, and so will their semantics and types. This will serve to identify important dimensions that may distinguish the synonyms and the variants.

b. Semantic prosody

Semantic prosody will be assessed by means of semantic dimensions. Using the Osgood differential, the idiosyncratic dimensions obtained in the former study – and in the linguistic research on word pairs – will be used in evaluating each pair of words. Hypotheses posed on the basis of the former study and on the basis of linguistic evidence will be tested using statistical analyses: comparing the mean scores on each dimension for the two members of each synonym pair or variant pair.

c. Short stories

Given the information obtained from the former two studies, short stories will be created with loanwords and their synonyms embedded in them. Questions will then be asked concerning the objects in the stories and about preferences and affective attitudes towards them.

Conclusions from the three studies will be drawn for each synonym and variant pair separately but where possible (i.e. when the dimensions are congruent), they will be generalized over sets of pairs to detect differences in the general character of loan vs. native words and unassimilated vs. assimilated variants.