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Abstract：
The use of taboo words represents one of the most common and arguably universal linguistic behaviors, fulfilling a wide range of psychological and social functions. However, in the scientific literature, taboo language is poorly characterized, and how it is realized in different languages and populations remains largely unexplored. Here we provide a database of taboo words, collected from different linguistic communities (Study 1, N = 1046), along with their speaker-centered semantic characterization (Study 2, N = 455 for each of six rating dimensions), covering 13 languages and 17 countries from all five permanently inhabited continents. Our results show that, in all languages, taboo words are mainly characterized by extremely low valence and high arousal, and very low written frequency. However, a significant amount of cross-country variability in words\' tabooness and offensiveness proves the importance of community-specific sociocultural knowledge in the study of taboo language.
摘要：
禁忌词的使用代表了最常见和可以说是普遍的语言行为之一，履行广泛的心理和社会功能。然而,在科学文献中，禁忌语言特征不佳，以及它是如何在不同的语言和人群中实现的，在很大程度上仍未被探索。这里我们提供了一个禁忌词的数据库，从不同的语言社区收集(研究1，N=1046)，以及他们以说话者为中心的语义表征(研究2，六个评级维度中的每一个N=455)，覆盖所有五个永久居住大陆的13种语言和17个国家。我们的研究结果表明,在所有语言中，禁忌词的主要特点是低效价和高唤醒，很低的写入频率。然而,大量的跨国差异的词汇禁忌和攻击性证明了社区特有的社会文化知识在禁忌语言研究中的重要性。
