To what extent are naming variants for visually presented objects hierarchically related?

Abstract

Objects often belong to many different categories (e.g., a persian cat simultaneously belongs to the categories CAT, PET, MAMMAL, CARNIVORE and ANIMAL) and thus they do not have one proper name to refer to them but many names. Research on object naming and categorization has traditionally focused on hierarchical relations between the alternative names for an object and its preferred or modal name. However, objects can also be cross-classified into categories which are non-hierarchically related, attending to alternative conceptualizations (e.g., ‘dessert’ and ‘cake’). In this study, we will investigate the extent to which naming variants for visually presented objects are either hierarchically or non-hierarchically related to their modal names. For this purpose, we will use ManyNames, a dataset of naturalistic images and we will contrast our findings with those yielded by S&V and BOSS, which consist of context-free images depicting idealized objects.