A Psycho-Lexical Taxonomy of Belarusian language
Keywords:
personality, psycho-lexical taxonomy, Belarusian languageAbstract
Identification of terms describing personality traits in Belarusian language was the aim of current psycho-lexical study. This was accomplished by analysing 105 thousand words from an unabridged dictionary of Belarusian language. Following that 2,763 terms used for describing personal attributes were selected; these terms were adjectives, participles, typological nouns and attributional nouns. In the next stage the selection of personal descriptors was classified to five categories and thirteen subcategories by a team of trained judges. Taxonomic decisions of the judges were psychometrically verified for validity and reliability. As the outcome of current study three lists of personal descriptors were identified, which included 604 adjectives, 311 attributional nouns and 158 typological nouns. Findings of this study contribute to the discussion on the universal traits used for personality description. They may also become a foundation for the future questionnaire based research aiming to identify the psycho-lexical structure of Belarusian language.
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