Imagery Value, Subjective and Objective Frequency, Date of Entry into the Language, and Degree of Polysemy in a Sample of 998 French Words

Abstract

A random sample of 998 lexical words was drawn from a dictionary of the French language. Two groups of subjects rated the words for imagery value (IV) and subjective frequency (SF). Despite substantial individual differences in the ratings, the subjective measures were highly reliable (α = 0.98 for both IV and SF). The relation between the standard deviation and the mean of the ratings can be described by a quadratic function (R = 0.93 for IV and R = 0.75 for SF). The independence of IV and frequency was confirmed. IV was found to be partially dependent on grammatical category (η = 0.50) and slightly dependent on polysemy. Date of entry into the language (DE) was correlated with objective and subjective frequency. The correlation between DE and IV was weak. The words and their characteristics are presented in the Appendix.