Exploring the measurement of markedness and its relationship with other linguistic variables

Antonym pair members can be differentiated by each word's markedness-that distinction attributable to the presence or absence of features at morphological or semantic levels. Morphologically marked words incorporate their unmarked counterpart with additional morphs (e.g., "unlucky" vs. "lucky"); properties used to determine semantically marked words (e.g., "short" vs. "long") are less clearly defined. Despite extensive theoretical scrutiny, the lexical properties of markedness have received scant empirical study. The current paper employs an antonym sequencing approach to measure markedness: establishing markedness probabilities for individual words and evaluating their relationship with other lexical properties (e.g., length, frequency, valence). Regression analyses reveal that markedness probability is, as predicted, related to affixation and also strongly related to valence. Our results support the suggestion that antonym sequence is reflected in discourse, and further analysis demonstrates that markedness probabilities, derived from the antonym sequencing task, reflect the ordering of antonyms within natural language. In line with the Pollyanna Hypothesis, we argue that markedness is closely related to valence; language users demonstrate a tendency to present words evaluated positively ahead of those evaluated negatively if given the choice. Future research should consider the relationship of markedness and valence, and the influence of contextual information in determining which member of an antonym pair is marked or unmarked within discourse

Haloes gone MAD: The Halo-Finder Comparison Project

[abridged] We present a detailed comparison of fundamental dark matter halo properties retrieved by a substantial number of different halo finders. These codes span a wide range of techniques including friends-of-friends (FOF), spherical-overdensity (SO) and phase-space based algorithms. We further introduce a robust (and publicly available) suite of test scenarios that allows halo finder developers to compare the performance of their codes against those presented here. This set includes mock haloes containing various levels and distributions of substructure at a range of resolutions as well as a cosmological simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe. All the halo finding codes tested could successfully recover the spatial location of our mock haloes. They further returned lists of particles (potentially) belonging to the object that led to coinciding values for the maximum of the circular velocity profile and the radius where it is reached. All the finders based in configuration space struggled to recover substructure that was located close to the centre of the host halo and the radial dependence of the mass recovered varies from finder to finder. Those finders based in phase space could resolve central substructure although they found difficulties in accurately recovering its properties. Via a resolution study we found that most of the finders could not reliably recover substructure containing fewer than 30-40 particles. However, also here the phase space finders excelled by resolving substructure down to 10-20 particles. By comparing the halo finders using a high resolution cosmological volume we found that they agree remarkably well on fundamental properties of astrophysical significance (e.g. mass, position, velocity, and peak of the rotation curve).Comment: 27 interesting pages, 20 beautiful figures, and 4 informative tables accepted for publication in MNRAS. The high-resolution version of the paper as well as all the test cases and analysis can be found at the web site http://popia.ft.uam.es/HaloesGoingMA

Haloes gone MAD: The Halo-Finder Comparison Project

We present a detailed comparison of fundamental dark matter halo properties retrieved by a substantial number of different halo finders. These codes span a wide range of techniques including friends-of-friends, spherical-overdensity and phase-space-based algorithms. We further introduce a robust (and publicly available) suite of test scenarios that allow halo finder developers to compare the performance of their codes against those presented here. This set includes mock haloes containing various levels and distributions of substructure at a range of resolutions as well as a cosmological simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe. All the halo-finding codes tested could successfully recover the spatial location of our mock haloes. They further returned lists of particles (potentially) belonging to the object that led to coinciding values for the maximum of the circular velocity profile and the radius where it is reached. All the finders based in configuration space struggled to recover substructure that was located close to the centre of the host halo, and the radial dependence of the mass recovered varies from finder to finder. Those finders based in phase space could resolve central substructure although they found difficulties in accurately recovering its properties. Through a resolution study we found that most of the finders could not reliably recover substructure containing fewer than 30-40 particles. However, also here the phase-space finders excelled by resolving substructure down to 10-20 particles. By comparing the halo finders using a high-resolution cosmological volume, we found that they agree remarkably well on fundamental properties of astrophysical significance (e.g. mass, position, velocity and peak of the rotation curve). We further suggest to utilize the peak of the rotation curve, vmax, as a proxy for mass, given the arbitrariness in defining a proper halo edg

British eDom norms

Data set described in the Journal of Open Psychology Data "Relative meaning frequencies for 100 homonyms: British eDom norms" paper by Greg Maciejewski and Ekaterini Klepousniotou Citation: Maciejewski, G. & Klepousniotou, E., (2016). Relative Meaning Frequencies for 100 Homonyms: British eDom Norms. Journal of Open Psychology Data, 4(1), e6. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jopd.2

The impact of “smart words” on impression formation: Evidence from evaluations of employment suitability

Individuals use others’ language as a cue when making inferences about their characteristics and traits. Here, we investigated whether this applies to the use of “smart words”, or advanced, sophisticated words assumed to make one sound smart. Participants rated employment suitability of fictitious job applicants based on cover letters that included either a small number of smart words (e.g., “quixotic”) or their regular counterparts (e.g., “impractical”). The results showed that smart words had a significant positive impact on all evaluations of applicants’ skills and personal/intellectual attributes (e.g., relevant experience, decisiveness, aptitude for learning). This finding adds to the growing literature on the role of language in impression formation, and suggests that using as few as eight smart words in a cover letter, in place of less sophisticated synonyms, can put the applicant at a considerable advantage when looking for employment

Type of polysemy matters: Evidence from semantic relatedness decisions

Research into semantic ambiguity has shown that homonyms with multiple unrelated meanings inhibit processing, whereas polysemes with multiple related senses tend to facilitate it. However, more recent work suggests there may also be important differences among polysemes. To explore this further, we examined semantic relatedness decisions to irregular polysemes with unconventional, unpredictable sense extensions (e.g., ‘Windows/food menu’), metonymic polysemes with conventional, predictable sense extensions (e.g., ‘fluffy/spicy rabbit’), and metaphorical polysemes with conventionalised figurative sense extensions (e.g., ‘wooden/authoritative chair’) as well as homonyms (e.g., ‘money/river bank’) and unambiguous words. Three web-based experiments manipulated the duration of the ambiguous word (200/500/800 ms) to also delineate the time-course of access to the different senses. The findings suggest that just like homonyms, the senses of irregular polysemes have separate representations that compete with each other for activation and slow semantic processing. For the other polysemes, there seems to be a single representation that acts as a gateway to the different senses (metonymic) or maps mainly onto the dominant, literal sense (metaphorical). Overall, the findings support the distinction within polysemy and help to advance or constrain existing models of semantic ambiguity

Social isolation during COVID-19 lockdown impairs cognitive function

Studies examining the effect of social isolation on cognitive function typically involve older adults and/or specialist groups (e.g., expeditions). We considered the effects of COVID-19-induced social isolation on cognitive function within a representative sample of the general population. We additionally considered how participants ‘shielding’ due to underlying health complications, or living alone, performed. We predicted that performance would be poorest under strictest, most-isolating conditions. At five timepoints over 13 weeks, participants (N = 342; aged 18–72 years) completed online tasks measuring attention, memory, decision-making, time-estimation, and learning. Participants indicated their mood as ‘lockdown’ was eased. Performance typically improved as opportunities for social contact increased. Interactions between participant sub-groups and timepoint demonstrated that performance was shaped by individuals' social isolation levels. Social isolation is linked to cognitive decline in the absence of ageing covariates. The impact of social isolation on cognitive function should be considered when implementing prolonged pandemic-related restrictive conditions