ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
Language is more abstract than you think, or, why aren't languages more iconic?
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed.
- Contextualized sensorimotor norms: Multi-dimensional measures of sensorimotor strength for ambiguous English words, in context.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Relationships Between Subjective Iconicity Ratings and Phonological Variables in English and Spanish.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Semantic memory network resilience in aging: The role of abstract and semantically diverse words.Cognition · 2026Article
- Reduced age differences in semantic memory networks: Evidence from semantically diverse free associations.Neuropsychologia · 2026Article
- The unity of sense and mind: A review of cross-domain mapping.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Large Language Models as Distributional Baselines for Language Tasks.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Analogies evolve by increasing transmission fidelity in the communication of complex information.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- Sorries seem to have the harder words.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
- Iconic Words Are Associated With Iconic Gestures.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- The Relationship Between Community Size and Iconicity in Sign Languages.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- Cracking arbitrariness: A data-driven study of auditory iconicity in spoken English.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Sounds of the future and past.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
- A lexical database of British Sign Language (BSL) and German Sign Language (DGS): Iconicity ratings, iconic strategies, and concreteness norms.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- Digital connection, real bonding: Brief online chats boost interpersonal closeness regardless of the conversational topic.Heliyon · 2025Article
- Impact of pacifier use and parenting characteristics on toddlers' vocabulary development.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Invariant representations in abstract concept grounding - the physical world in grounded cognition.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Review
- Non-arbitrary mappings between size and sound of English words: Form typicality effects during lexical access and memory.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2024Article
- Concepts, abstractness and inner speech.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Rethinking the role of language in embodied cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How abstract is language? We show that abstractness pervades every corner of language, going far beyond the usual examples of
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.