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According to the CARIN theory of Gagn? and Shoben (1997), conceptual relations play an important role in compound interpretation. This study develops three measures gauging the role of conceptual relations, and pits these measures against measures based on latent semantic analysis (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The CARIN measures successfully predict response latencies in a familiarity categorization task, in a semantic transparency task, and in visual lexical decision. Of the measures based on latent semantic analysis, only a measure orthogonal to the conceptual relations, which instead gauges the extent to which the concepts for the compound?s head and the compound itself are discriminated, also reached significance. Results further indicate that in tasks requiring careful assessment of the meaning of the compound, general knowledge of conceptual relations plays a central role, whereas in the lexical decision task, attention shifts to co-activated meanings and the specifics of the conceptual relations realized in the compound?s modifier family.

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The authors view the research presented in the article as the further elaborating on the investigational approaches to ethnic identification and self-identification processes developed by Yu. Sorokin (a series of works under the title of “Ethnic conflictology”). The article describes preliminary results of the experimental study aimed at investigating the Russian-Vietnamese mutual perceptions found in the corresponding languages and cultures. Students of Sechenov University (n=109) took part in the questionnaire-based pilot study providing qualitative data for the reconstruction of ethnic “self-portraits” and “portraits” of Russians and Vietnamese. The study group was regarded homogeneous in terms of their linguistic and cultural background. The comparative analysis of the results obtained showed both common and specific characteristics that comprised characterological “portrait” of the Vietnamese and “self-portrait” developed by the Russian respondents. For instance, kindness turned out to be theonly common characteristics included by the respondents in both “portraits”. The most frequent mentions in the Russian self-identification were patience and courage, while the Vietnamese were described as hard-working and joyful. Specific appearance, national food, and material culture were mentioned to make up for the lack of ideas about the Vietnamese generalized (collective) character traits. The Russian anthroponymic “self-portrait” included the following categories: writers and poets (Russian literature), scientists, political leaders, and cosmonauts. The authors point out that historical figures of Russia were mentioned by the respondents more often than contemporary anthroponyms. Personified “portrait” of the Vietnamese nation was substantially undercharacterized; as the majority of respondents stated lack of knowledge about the Vietnamese culture and provided no names at all.It is believed that this large-scale international research project will provide new data on the Russian-Vietnamese mutual perceptions as a result of the processes of ethnic identification and self-identification. The research aims to develop Yuri Sorokin’s hypothesis that ethnic “portraits” and “self-portraits” demonstrate axiological and cognitive attitudes of their authors and have reduced and attributive nature.