30 Dirk Geeraerts and Dirk Speelman
polysemy. Some of the overlaps in the example, as in the case of vlim, do
not constitute prime examples of the phenomenon that motivates the intro-
duction of vagueness in the analysis. We are interested in the effect of
vagueness because we assume that conceptual unclarity, like the fuzziness
of the borderline between one concept and the other, may lead to lexical
heterogeneity. While this may apply to the relationship between BEKKEN-
HOLTE ‘pelvic cavity’and LIES 'groin', which are plausibly easy to confuse,
a conceptual confusion between 'eyelash' and 'loin' seems unlikely. If a
workable criterion for singling out such cases can be found (but see Geer-
aerts 1993), we will be able to investigate whether conceptual overlaps of
the vlim type have a different effect from those of the lies type. For the
present exploratory purposes, however, we restrict the analysis to the
course-grained measure described above.
- The inclusion of negative affect is motivated by the recognition that ta-
boo leads to rich synonymy (Allan and Burridge 1988). Given domains like
procreation and defecation, taboo is obviously relevant for the lexical field
of the human body. Negative affect is not restricted to such obvious taboo
areas, however. The dictionary contains many questions in which it is ex-
plicitly asked to give pejorative terms for a certain concept, i.e. we find
concepts that are explicitly marked as negative and that were surveyed as
such. Examples are NEUS (SPOTNAAM) ‘nose (pejorative)’, GEZICHT (SPOT-
NAAM) ‘face (pejorative)’, and HOOFD (SPOTNAAM) ‘head (pejorative)’. In
practical terms, we did not start from these labels, but we used the same
method for the identification of negative affect as for the identification of
lack of familiarity: seven members of our research group rated the 206 bod-
ily concepts in the database on a five point scale of negative affect, with 1
indicating no negative affect, and 5 a strong negative affect. The results are
again consistent and plausible: examples of concepts with strong negative
affect are AARSSPLEET ‘anal cleft’, GELUIDLOZE WIND ‘noiseless fart’,
KWIJL ‘drool’, or PAPPERIG PERSOON ‘fat, plump person’.
2.3. The response variable
Lexical heterogeneity, the dependent variable in the investigation, is de-
fined as a complex factor. If, in fact, we consider which phenomena can
point to heterogeneity, we will not only wish to take into account lexical
diversity (the existence of different words for naming a concept) but also