Up until now it has been assumed that the German language comprises far more personality descriptive adjectives (e.g. cynical) than type nouns (e.g. cynic); cf. the article by Angleitner, Ostendorf and John (1990). The present paper shows that this conclusion is unwarranted. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the German taxonomers considered only a small fraction of the relevant type nouns. Then follows a discussion of why the German language contains a huge number of personality type nouns. Finally, some pitfalls of the lexical approach to personality description are considered.
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