QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF TRAIT-DESCRIPTIVE TYPE NOUNS

In this paper we refute Henss' (1995) conclusion that the German langu age does not contain far more personality descriptive adjectives than type nouns. Since Henss' paper touches in passing some of the most sen sitive aspects of the psycholexical approach, we address some of the t endencies in his paper that are not quite on target. In particular, we discuss distinctions between personality-relevant and personality-des criptive terms, between lexicon and dictionary, between adjectives and nouns. We also discuss the effects of choice of dictionary, and the d efinition of personality relative to coverage of the lexicon of person ality. Moreover, seven European taxonomies are reviewed in order to pr ovide an empirical basis for our arguments.