囧研究：无意义词汇 影响消费习惯？

 　　Scientists have discovered that some made-up words such as subvick, bollyze and quingel are far more amusing than others. This is because people find nonsense words with uncommon¹ letter combinations more unexpected and humorous than those words with probable sequences of letters.

　　科学家发现诸如subvick, bollyze和quingel之类的混合词比其他词汇更加有趣。这是因为人们发现，不常用字母拼成的无意义词汇比正常词汇更令人惊喜和引人发笑。

　　A study, led by a team from the department of psychology² at the University of Alberta, Canada, examined the theory that some nonsense words are funnier than others. The team used a computer programme to generate thousands of random³ nonsense words.

　　加拿大阿尔伯塔大学的心理系团队进行了一项实验，用于检查该理论，即无意义词汇是否比其他词汇更加引人发笑。该团队利用电脑程序生成了上千个随意的无意义词汇。

　　囧研究：无意义词汇 影响消费习惯？

　　Any words that sounded the same as real words were removed from the test. Students were asked to compare two non-words and select the option they considered more humorous.

　　和正常词汇读音相同的无意义词汇会被删除。参与实验的学生被要求对比两个无意义词汇，并且选出他们认为更引人发笑的那个词。

　　In the second part, they were shown a single non-word and asked to rate how humorous they found it on a scale from one to 100. Researchers discovered that some words such as blabesoc were indeed funnier than other non-words, like anotain.

　　对于另外一部分学生，工作人员先向他们展示一个无意义词汇，然后让他们在1-100之间选个数字来评定这个词的幽默性。

　　Researchers discovered that some words such as blabesoc were indeed funnier than other non-words, like anotain. Chris Westbury, a psychology professor and lead author of the study, said: ‘The weirder⁴ the word is, the funnier the word is.

　　实验者发现，诸如blabesoc这类的无意义词汇确实比像anotain这类的无意义词汇更引人发笑。心理学教授克、该实验的主要发起人里斯·韦斯特伯里说：“词汇越奇怪，就越引人发笑。

　　The results were released in a paper entitled, Telling the World’s Least Funny Jokes: On the Quantification of Humour As Entropy, and published in the Journal of Memory and Language. The findings back up the 19th century theory from German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who proposed that humour is a result of an expectation violation⁵.

　　实验结果以”讲述世界上最不可笑的笑话——关于幽默做为平均信息量的品质“为题，发表在《记忆与语言杂志》上。这一发现印证了19世纪德国哲学家亚瑟·叔本华的理论，他认为幽默就是违背预期的。

　　Identifying the funniest words is already a skill of good comedians⁶ or comic writers. The paper says: ‘The effect may also have practical effects in product naming, if it can be shown that the computable⁷ funniness in a name is a relevant factor in consumer behaviour.

　　辨别最幽默词汇已经成为优秀喜剧演员或喜剧作家的必备技能了。论文中说到：如果能够证明产品幽默的名称会影响到消费习惯，那么这可能会对产品命名产生实际的影响。

　　We predict that consumers will strongly prefer (funny Non Words) ‘whook’or ‘mamessa’to (unfunny Non Words) ‘turth’or ‘suppect’for a new product name.

　　我们相信，与诸如‘turth’或者 ‘suppect’这类不可笑的无意义词汇相比，消费者们会格外青睐‘whook’ 或者 ‘mamessa’这类滑稽的无意义词汇。

1 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

2 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

3 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

4 weirder   

怪诞的( weird的比较级 )； 神秘而可怕的； 超然的； 古怪的

参考例句：

• Actually, things got a little weirder when the tow truck driver showed up. 事实上，在拖吊车司机出现后，事情的发展更加怪异。

5 violation   

n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯

参考例句：

• He roared that was a violation of the rules.他大声说，那是违反规则的。
• He was fined 200 dollars for violation of traffic regulation.他因违反交通规则被罚款200美元。

6 comedians   

n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The voice was rich, lordly, Harvardish, like all the boring radio comedians'imitations. 声音浑厚、威严，俨然是哈佛出身的气派，就跟无线电里所有的滑稽演员叫人已经听腻的模仿完全一样。 来自辞典例句
• He distracted them by joking and imitating movie and radio comedians. 他用开玩笑的方法或者模仿电影及广播中的滑稽演员来对付他们。 来自辞典例句

7 computable   

adj.可计算的

参考例句：

• Finally, this thesis constructs a computable general equilibrium model, analyzes the policy effects. 最后，论文建立了可计算一般均衡模型，定量测试所提出的政策建。 来自互联网
• Computable measures of resistance can be applied in the field of prediction for earthquake damage. 文中进一步将结构时变抗力的计算方法延伸到震害预测领域。 来自互联网