もののカテゴリー化に関する比較文化的研究(その1) : アフリカの2地域ケニア・ガーナを中心に

概要

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This study reports the result of perception and categorization of objects which were conducted in certain regions of Africa of East and West (Kenya and Ghana) during the year of 1993. The stimulus materials were consisted of six kinds, each of which systematically varied in certain dimensions (in heights or width) and thus each kind had ten variations along one of the above dimensions. Twenty subjects of each group were instructed to name, in their native languages, an object which was immediately came up to their minds in looking at each figure through an interview technique. Their responses were translated into English and tabulated in terms of the frequency of names mentioned to each figure, and were converted into graphs showing the relative frequency curves for each frame with the use of statistical technique of smoothing. The results show that striking differences are observed in naming of each frame among the African groups, which seems to support the prototype theory in their cultural specificity proposed by Rosch (1976) and also partially supports the lexical semantic effect on naming of objects, i.e., the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
東海大学の論文