The linguistic dimensions of concrete and abstract concepts: lexical category, morphological structure, countability, and etymology

Abstract The distinction between abstract and concrete concepts is fundamental to cognitive linguistics science. This commonly operationalized through concreteness ratings based on the aggregated judgments of many people. What often overlooked in experimental studies using this operationalization that are attributed words , not directly. In paper we explore relationship linguistic properties English conceptual abstractness/concreteness. Based hypotheses stated existing literature select a set variables (part speech, morphological structure, countability, etymology) verify whether they statistically associated with ratings. We show nouns rated as more compared other parts but mass less than count nouns. Furthermore, complex structure abstractness, for etymology, French- Latin-derived origin. shows indeed degree attribute underlying concepts, discuss implications these findings have theory empirical investigations sciences.