Ratings of the perceptual modalities contribution to the semantics of words in relation to parts of speech and lexico-grammatical categories

The article presents the results of an examination of a hypothesis that in the composite groups of words of the Russian language, randomly sampled, there will be differences in the ratings of the average estimates of the contribution of perception modalities to semantics and their correlations, depending on the group sets of words to parts of speech and lexico-grammatical word classes. The theoretical basis of the study was the theoretical ideas in the direction of logical analysis of language and the theory of embodied cognition. RuWordPerception psycholinguistic information data served as the empirical research base. Estimates were analyzed, presented by 111 respondents, native Russian speakers, 90 women, 27 men, mean age 28, SD 12. The total number of reactions is 333,000. The analysis was carried out in Rstudio using the R language, version 4.0.5. The research hypothesis was partially confirmed. The most signifacant results are the following. (1) Nouns are opposed to predicate classes both in terms of average estimates of the contribution of modalities and the nature of correlations. (2) The class of concrete nouns, which can be characterized as prototypical, shows the described tendency to the fullest extent, strengthening it both in the nature of evaluations and in the types of correlations. (3) A higher level of average ratings in the ratings of modalities of relative adjectives in relation to the ratings of quality adjectives and transitive verbs in relation to intransitive ones is determined by the type of semantic structure - the expression of subject relations and a more complex system of valent subject relations of transitive verbs. (4) The absence of significant and strong correlations (with the exception of gustatory and olfactory connections) in nouns and their presence in predicate classes of words is also, in our opinion, correlated with the property of multidimensionality and heterogeneity of semantics. (5) It seems that the presence of visible coincidences in the tendencies of correlations of relative adjectives with two categories of verbs is correlated with their marginal position, the general type of semantics expressing the type of relations of various aspects. (6) There is a fundamental commonality both in the evaluations of the contribution of modalities of perception and in the type of correlations between the ratings of modalities not only for lexico-grammatical categories, but for part-of-speech classes of words in the Russian language, which correlates with the data obtained on the material of other languages. These general tendencies are the leading role of visual modality, the marginal role of olfactory and gustatory modalities, and the high level of correlations between these two modalities.