LINGUIST List 23.734 Tue Feb 14 2012 Qs: Word Association Project Editor for this issue: Zac Smith <zaclinguistlist.org> New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate. In addition to posting a summary, we'd like to remind people that it is usually a good idea to personally thank those individuals who have taken the trouble to respond to the query. To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     gert storms , Word Association Project Message 1: Word Association Project Date: 10-Feb-2012 From: gert storms <gert.stormspsy.kuleuven.be> Subject: Word Association Project E-mail this message to a friend Hi all, Over the past few weeks, we (several psycholinguists from different universities) have been trying to set up a scientific study that is important for many researchers interested in words, word meaning, and semantics. It is a huge word association project, in which people are asked to participate in a small task that doesn't last langer than 5 minutes. Our goal is to build a global word association network that contains connections between about 40,000 words, the size of the lexicon of an average adult. Setting up such a network might learn us a lot about semantic memory, how it develops, and maybe also about how it can deteriorate (like in Alzheimer's disease). Most people enjoy doing the task, but we need thousands of participants to succeed. After sending e-mails to psychology and cognitive science students some weeks ago, we got about 10,000 participants quickly, but unfortunately the frequency of participation slowed down and we need more subjects. That is why we address you. Would it be possible to forward this call for participation to graduate and undergraduate students who are fluent in English? The task can be found on http://www.smallworldofwords.com If people would REALLY like to help us, they can forward the call to students, friends, family, etc. or distribute the call through facebook, twitter, etc. (In this way, we succeeded in building a word association network in Dutch over the past years. The network comprises about 13,000 words and was built using more than 4,000,000 word associations, gathered from 100,000 native Dutch speakers. The problem is only: who cares about Dutch data. That is why we want to do the same in English.) If anyone has suggestions on how to reach more fluent English participants for this study, please don't hesitate to contact us. Needless to say that the network will be freely available to all interested language researchers when it becomes substantial enough. We thank you in advance. If you want more information, don't hesitate to contact me. With kind regards, Prof. G. Storms & Dr. S. De Deyne Department of Psychology University of Leuven Tiensestraat 102 3000 Leuven Belgium Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics                             Psycholinguistics                             Syntax Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 14-Feb-2012       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.