1- Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran , sh-sharifi@um.ac.ir
2- Associate Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Payame Noor University, Tehran. Iran
Abstract: (1028 Views)
The purpose of this research is to determine the average perceptual strength of the five senses in the Persian language based on average perceptual strength hierarchy by Lynott and Connell (2009). To achieve this goal, (100) commonly used Persian sensory adjectives and (25) native Persian-speaking subjects were used to express their level of sensory perception of each adjective based on the 5-point Likert Scale. Also, (20) other subjects were asked to choose names for the given adjectives. These tests were carried out to answer these questions: what percentage of adjectives are exclusively attributed to one of the five senses, how much was the total score of each sense on the 5-point Likert Scale, and as overall which sense has the highest average perceptual strength؟ Also is the rate of collocations of names and adjectives of the same domain more than the collocations of nouns and adjectives of different domains, as Lynott and Connell believe? The results showed the average perceptual strength of the senses in Persian data is different from the findings of Lynott and Connell (2009) only in the position of the sense of hearing, also according to their findings, the sense of vision has the highest and the sense of smell has the lowest average perceptual strength among the five senses. In terms of collocation of names and adjectives, it was found that with a little consideration, Lynott and Connell’s idea about the larger number of the same-domain sensory name- adjective collocations can be accepted.