Coding and Validation for Breadth and Desirability of 1,214 English Adjectives.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Computational Social Science

Background:

• Adjectives are crucial for describing and evaluating individuals, varying in desirability and breadth.
• Existing resources on adjectival breadth are limited and outdated, hindering empirical research.
• Adjectival breadth, the scope of meaning for an adjective, is understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a comprehensive and diverse database of subjective adjective ratings.
• To provide updated data on adjectival breadth and desirability for 1,214 adjectives.
• To facilitate detailed analysis of adjectival use in various contexts.

Main Methods:

• Collected subjective ratings from approximately 1,500 American participants.
• Assessed 1,214 adjectives on dimensions of breadth and desirability.
• Validated the database through large-scale analysis of online product reviews.

Main Results:

• A new, comprehensive database of adjectival breadth and desirability ratings was created.
• Analysis confirmed that variation in adjective breadth is prevalent in natural language.
• The database demonstrated utility in analyzing online product review language.

Conclusions:

• The new adjective database is a valuable resource for semantic representation and social inference research.
• Findings support the importance of adjectival breadth in understanding evaluative communication.
• The database enables more nuanced studies of language use in academic and applied settings.