Host: The Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology
Recent studies have suggested that relative embodiment, which indicates how much physical activity is associated with the meaning of a verb, affects the semantic processing of English verbs. However, the relative embodiment of Japanese verbs has not yet been investigated. Therefore, in this study, we collected relative embodiment ratings for 219 Japanese verbs and examined their relationship with existing word characteristics. The results showed that the relative embodiment ratings correlate with the indicators that are predicted to be related to the ratings. On the other hand, cluster-analysis results suggested that relative embodiment could be discriminated from those indicators. Thus, relative embodiment captures a different semantic aspect from those captured by other measurements.
