DESCRIPTION OF THE REFERENTS

The language of experience is particularly well suited for research because its referents have four advantages over the referents of most other types of words: first, they may be ordered by objective, logical criteria (for example, the centigrade scale for temperatures; the frequency scale of pure tones of equal intensity, etc.), whereas furniture, relatives, or most other concrete referents have no such logical and unique orders. Second, the referents have continuity in nature (for example, within certain limits any degree of temperature may be encountered or any sound frequency heard, whereas the domain of chairs does not grade into the domain of, say, benches, nor do uncles grade into aunts). Third, words in the language of experience refer to closed classes; our sensory thresholds set limits to perception and thus there is a bound to the range of phenomena that may be called hot, loud, green, etc. Fourth, the referents are simple in the sense that each instant may be completely specified by a fixed and very small number of measurements. Temperature is specified by just one measurement; pure tones by two - intensity and frequency ; colors by three - for example, the Munsell scales of hue, brightness, and saturation.