Grammatical contingencies in word association

Abstract

With the aim of providing a broader normative base for association data, the contingencies between the grammatical class of a stimulus and that of its associative response were examined. The stimuli were very frequently occurring words, sampled from a variety of grammatical classes. Differences among grammatical classes were found in the degree of concentration of associations; there were also differences in the form-class distributions of the associations. For all grammatical classes (except articles) the modal response class was the same as that of the stimulus, but with considerable differences in the popularity of the modal response class. The implication of the finding that grammatical classes differ noticeably in their associative patterning is discussed, and some comment is made on the uses of word-association data.