Shape salience in English and Chinese: Implications for the effects of language on cognition

Chinese requires classifiers when numerals or demonstratives are present. Different nouns go with different classifiers, where classifiers group nouns into classes by semantic properties such as shape, material, and size. In English, only a limited set of nouns require classifiers for quantification such as a loaf of bread. This dissertation examined whether this language difference affects how Chinese and English speakers conceptualize and classify objects.; I hypothesize that objects denoted by nouns collocating with the same classifiers are more likely to be grouped together than those that do not and that the shape feature (long, flat, or round) used for classification in the language should be perceived more saliently than other features. To test this hypothesis, five studies were conducted to examine the relative salience of shape for Chinese and English speakers.; The first three studies were designed to test English and Chinese speakers' preference for shape and taxonomic kind when classifying objects. In the other two studies, the participants were asked to rate objects as long, flat and round on a 1 to 5 scale. Pictured objects were used for Study 4, and written stimuli were used for Study 5.; The results of classification indicate that speakers of both languages classify objects based on taxonomic similarity most of the time, though Chinese speakers made more shape choices than English speakers.; No difference was found in shape ratings with pictures between Chinese and English speakers, while there was a difference when only words were used. The results indicate that Chinese and English speakers perceive shape in a similar way, though their prototypical mental representations of referents may be different.; The results of this dissertation refute the strong version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis—language determines thought, and support the weak version of this hypothesis—language influences thought.{09}The results from the classification tasks indicate the effects of Chinese classifiers on Chinese speakers' object categorization. The results of shape ratings show that the salient features encoded in Chinese classifiers reflect the salient features perceived by speakers of different languages.