Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Competing Semantic And Phonological Constraints In Novel Binomials, Eli George

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This experiment investigates why certain pairs of words, called “frozen binomials” always appear in the same order. It uses an electronic survey that asks subjects to determine what order they would prefer to say pairs of certain words. Specifically, the experiment tests whether it is the sound of the words or the meaning of the words that determines their order. While the data was inconclusive, it does suggest the existence of deeper rules for the ordering of these words.