PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

In this paper we refute Henss' (1995) conclusion that the German language does not contain far more personality descriptive adjectives than type nouns. Since Henss' paper touches in passing some of the most sensitive aspects of the psycholexical approach, we address some of the tendencies in his paper that are not quite on target. In particular, we discuss distinctions between personality-relevant and personality-descriptive terms, between lexicon and dictionary, between adjectives and nouns. We also discuss the effects of choice of dictionary, and the definition of personality relative to coverage of the lexicon of personality. Moreover, seven European taxonomies are reviewed in order to provide an empirical basis for our arguments.