Do classifier categories affect or reflect object concepts?

We conceptualize objects based on sensorimotor information gleaned from real-world experience. To what extent is conceptual information structured according to higher-level linguistic features? We investigate whether classifiers, a grammatical category, shape the conceptual representations of objects. In three experiments native Mandarin speakers (a classifier language) and native Dutch speakers (a language without classifiers) judged the similarity of a target object with four objects (presented as words or pictures). One object shared a classifier with the target, the other objects did not.... Mehr ...