Defining and Classifying "Contrast" as a Semantic Category in Modern Chinese
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The aim of this paper is to rationalize the idea of constructing a contrast category as one of the semantic categories in Chinese Language,as well as to classify it from different perspectives.There are theoretical supports from cognitive psychology and linguistic that contrast as a semantic category in modern Chinese is the reflection of contrast as part of humankinds' cognitive mechanism.As a semantic category revises a certain relationship,contrast is characterized by highlighting difference.From different perspectives we can classify contrast category into different sub-categories as follows:marked contrast and unmarked contrast,antithetical contrast and non-antithetical contrast,two-thing contrast and two-profile contrast,linear contrast and non-linear contrast,overt contrast and implied contrast,unitary contrast and multiple contrast and etc.Cite
Besides comparison, the other three semantic categories, judgment, contrast and choice also have the semantic features. But they also have their own typical features which are not same with the categories of comparison, and it is the keynote those that makes them distinguished.
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This study adopts a dual-system view of category learning. The findings suggest that consumers who learn a dominant feature as a verbal rule for a product category will classify a new ambiguous product according to that feature even if it more closely resembles a different product category. The findings also demonstrate that dominant features can bias categorization toward a less prototypical category in the event that the new product breaks the rule. We refer to this phenomenon as criterial inferencing. Lastly, we offer unique empirical evidence to suggest that mood influences category learning and thus attenuates the criterial inferencing bias.
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Being white is central to whether we call an animal a "polar bear," but it is fairly peripheral to our concept of what apolar bear is. We propose that a feature is central to category naming in proportion to the feature's category validity—the probability of the feature, given the category. In contrast, a feature is conceptually central in a representation of the object to the extent that the feature is depended on by other features. Further, we propose that naming and conceptual centrality are more likely to disagree for features that hold at more specific levels (such asis white, which holds only for the specific category ofpolar bear) than for features that hold at intermediate levels of abstraction (such ashas claws, which holds for all bears). In support of these hypotheses, we report evidence that increasing the abstractness of category features has a greater effect on judgments of conceptual centrality than on judgments of name centrality and that other category features depend more on intermediate-level category features than on specific ones.
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Contrast in natural language concepts: An exemplar-based approach Wouter Voorspoels (wouter.voorspoels@psy.kuleuven.be) Gert Storms(gert.storms@psy.kuleuven.be) Wolf Vanpaemel (wolf.vanpaemel@psy.kuleuven.be) Department of Psychology, Tiensestraat 102 B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Abstract insects all are animal categories and clearly are more interre- lated than the categories mammals and doorknobs. The interrelatedness of natural language categories elicits the following intriguing question: Is the internal membership structure of a category determined solely by characteristics internal to the category, or do other, related categories influ- ence the category structure? In other words, is the the platy- pus an atypical member of mammals because of its apparent dissimilarity towards other mammals, or does its similarity towards other animal categories, such as birds and reptiles, contribute to its atypicality? The present paper is concerned with exactly this question and attempts to answer it using suc- cessful exemplar models that have their roots in artificial cat- egory learning research. We examine the influence of contrast categories on the internal graded membership structure of natural language categories. To this end we contrast two exemplar models in their account of typicality: According to the GCM, typicality is the summed similarity towards all category members. According to the SD- GCM, typicality is determined by both the summed similarity towards all category members and the summed dissimilarity towards members of contrast categories. For five animal cat- egories, we contrast the SD-GCM and the GCM in their ac- count of typicality. Results indicate that the internal category structure can indeed be co-determined by dissimilarity towards potential contrast categories. Keywords: concepts; categories; typicality; contrast cate- gories; computational models Introduction The platypus is a mammal. It can, however, hardly be called a ”good” mammal: It has webbed feet and a beak resembling that of a duck, it is venomous like insects and reptiles, it lays eggs as do birds and fish, and it is semi-aquatic, reminding one of amphibians. A cow, on the other hand, is a good, a more representative example of a mammal. Previous re- search suggests that people are in general agreement as to what are representative, good examples of a certain category and which members are bad examples. The graded mem- bership structure, or typicality gradient, can be observed in a broad range of everyday natural language categories (e.g., Hampton & Gardiner, 1983; Rosch & Mervis, 1975). Traditionally, typicality is defined as similarity towards a category representation: A member of a category is typical to the extent that it is similar to the category representation. Different views exist on what the category representation con- sists of. The two most dominant computational theories of category representation propose that a category is represented by a prototype (prototype models; e.g., Hampton, 1993), or the set of previously encountered members (exemplar mod- els; e.g., Medin & Schaffer, 1978 ). In general, it is found across an impressive array of conditions, both in artifical cat- egory learning experiments and natural language categories that exemplar representations provide the best description of human categorization. For present purposes we will therefore focus on exemplar models. While the graded membership obviously reflects the inter- nal structure of a category, natural language categories are not isolated entities, but generally reside in rich semantic do- mains. Categories vary along a continuum of interrelated- ness (Goldstone, 1996). For example, mammals, birds and Contrast category effects The most likely candidates to exert influence on the internal structure of other categories, are contrast categories. Contrast categories are considered to be at the same level of abstrac- tion, belonging to the same immediate superordinate as the target category. Further, they are contrastive or incompati- ble in the sense that one and only one word is applicable to any member of the category (Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976). For example, mammals and birds are contrast categories, both belonging to the same immediate superordinate category and they are mutually exclusive (an animal cannot be a bird and a mammal at the same time). We use the term contrast category effect for manifestations of influence of contrast categories on category based tasks. The notion of contrast category has a long history in nat- ural language concept representation literature. For exam- ple, in their influential family resemblance model, Rosch and Mervis (1975) assume that typicality of a category member is its similarity to other category members and its dissimilar- ity to members of contrast categories. Despite the theoretical importance attributed to contrast categories, little effort has been invested in demonstrating the independent role of con- trast categories in natural language categories, and evidence is ambiguous. In a thorough test of the independent contribu- tion of feature overlap with the target category and feature overlap with contrast categories, using both typicality rat- ings and classification response times, Verbeemen, Vanover- berghe, Storms, and Ruts (2001) found no evidence for con- trast effects. In sharp contrast with the findings of Verbeemen et al., using a geometric prototype model of concept repre-
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A contrast category effect on categorization occurs when the decision to apply a category term to an entity not only involves a comparison between the entity and the target category but is also influenced by a comparison of the entity with 1 or more alternative categories from the same domain as the target. Establishing a contrast category effect on categorization in natural language categories has proven to be laborious, especially when the categories concerned are natural kinds situated at the superordinate level of abstraction. We conducted 3 studies with these categories to look for an influence on categorization of both similarity to the target category and similarity to a contrast category. The results are analyzed with a probabilistic threshold model that assumes categorization decisions arise from the placement of threshold criteria by individual categorizers along a single scale that holds the experimental stimuli. The stimuli's positions along the scale are shown to be influenced by similarity to both target and contrast. These findings suggest that the prevalence of contrast category effects on categorization might have been underestimated. Additional analyses demonstrate how the proposed model can be employed in future studies to systematically investigate the origins of contrast category effects on categorization.
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Many psychological theories of categorization are based on similarity. Researchers have argued that functional similarity may constrain artifact category ----------~membership. An alternative 20ssibility is that the .~---=----------------similarity of physical features determines the category boundaries. In order to explore the role of similarity in naming artifact objects and to evaluate whether function or physical qualities determine the boundaries of each artifact category, the present study employed both English and Chinese speakers and used a large set of pictures of real objects (common containers such as bottles and jars) presented under laboratory conditions. Category membership was determined by a naming measure. Perceived similarity was determined by a sorting technique and a scali~g solution. The perceived similarity results suggested that categories are more constrained by physical qualities than function. The naming measure further suggested that category boundaries significantly differ between speakers of English and Chinese, although perceived similarity was ' highly correlated for the speakers of the two languages. These findings indicate that similarity does not fully correspond to and determine category membership. Usually, we call a cylindrical glass container that has a narrow mouth a bottle, and a cylindrical glass container that has a wide mouth a jar. What shall we call a similar cylindrical glass container with a medium mouth? _Tpi? seemingly simple decision involves a deeper psychological question: how are objects categorized? Current theories of categorization may not fully answer this question. The classical view assumes that the features that represent a concept are necessary and sufficient to define the concept, but researchers have failed to find adequate definitions for most common categories to support this view (Rosch & Mervis, 1975; Smith & Medin, 1981). Other psychological theories of categorization are based on similarity. For example, the exemplar view assumes that if an object is more similar to members of one category than it is to those of another category, then the object is categorized as a member of the first category (e.g. Brooks, 1978, 1987; Medin & Schaffer, 1978; Nosofsky, 1986, 1992; Smith & Medin, 1981). Th~ t.] limits of this view can'be readily seen with reference to the above example. It is difficult to make a judgment that the medium mouth container is more similar to members of the category bottle than those of the category jar, or
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