The Psychology of Word Meanings

3	Cross-Cultural Aspects of Word Meanings

Paula J. SchwanenflugelBenjamin G. BlountUniversity of Georgia

Pei-Jung LinTaipei Municipal Teachers College

Cross-cultural studies of the psychology of word meaning are important for the light they may shed on the potential sociocultural, environmental, and linguistic factors involved in the development of word meanings in different cultural and language groups. There has been an explosion of research interest in the structure, process, and acquisition of word meanings and categories in the past 2 decades (see Markman, 1989; Medin & Smith, 1984, for reviews). During this relative explosion, however, cross-cultural psycholinguistic studies on the topic have been few and far between. The vast majority ...